Google Reinstates Federated Jabber/XMPP Instant Messaging 32
jrepin writes "A few weeks ago the FSF reported that Google had started blocking invites sent from non-Google Jabber servers. This was done as a crude anti-spam measure. Google have since rolled out proper anti-spam filtering for its Jabber service, and has removed the invite block. This was announced a few days ago in a public mailing list post. This means that users of all Jabber servers will once again be able to fully communicate with Google users."
It always worked the other direction (Score:4, Insightful)
Google users could always request a connection from you. Its not like this was an attempt to stop outside XMPP use. They would have stopped outbound invites as well.
Re:Glad to know federated IM will work again (Score:4, Insightful)
++OpenFire
I stopped using it a few years back and switched to Google Apps because our company shrank down to a few employees, but my experience with OpenFire ranks it as THE BEST XMPP server, at least for companies under 200 employees (my experience level with it).
Its reliable, works with multiple internal/existing auth systems including AcitveDirectory and plain LDAP. Supports a metric fuckton of plugins, some of which add really cool features, and if you've got a Java developer, you can use it for all sorts of silly things.
Its also free (as in no cost) last I used it for the very base software, additional special stuff my cost more but I never needed them for normal XMPP functionality.
If you want to 'try' XMPP for yourself and you're not 40k employees, try OpenFire. The time you save dicking with ejabberd or whatever the latest/shitty C implementation currently is.
Re:Can you trust Google, when you are the product? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has shown that they will take away the free services they offer at any time, or even increase the advertising in them to make them almost unusable to some (such as Google Maps).
Really? Maybe its regional but I haven't noticed obtrusive advertising on google maps.