Cerulean Studios Releases Trillian IM Protocol Specifications 95
Runefox writes "Cerulean Studios, the company behind the long-lived Trillian instant messaging client, has released preliminary specifications to their proprietary "Astra" protocol, now named IMPP (Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol), which provides continuous client functionality as well as mandatory TLS encryption for clients. According to their blog, Cerulean Studios' motivation for the release is to promote interoperability among the throngs of IM services and clients available by allowing others to also use the protocol. Future concepts include federation with XMPP. While the documentation is in an early state and the protocol is claimed to still be in development, it is hoped that it will help decentralize the very heavily fragmented messaging ecosystem. It's implied that, in turn, greater options for privacy may become available in the wake of the PRISM scandal via privately-run federated servers, unaffiliated with major networks, yet still able to communicate with them."
Unimpressed (Score:3, Informative)
There has been a lot of backlash on their blog about this: Why didn't they just go with XMPP? What their protocol have that XMPP doesn't, or couldn't be extended to support?
Personally - just a guess (also, btw, disclaimer: I'm a subscriber) - I think they're dying. Their client haven't been getting any significant development for the past year, current issues with some protocols have been going unaddressed, and new features like Lync protocol support (which there are working OSS implementations) have been going completely ignored despite many people clamoring for it.
So, they have been silent for a long time, and now this. It's fishy.
Re:Unimpressed (Score:3, Informative)
XMPP doesn't provide for much in the way of security unless you are using strictly private single servers.
Once your contacts are scattered across multiple jabber servers all bets are off as far as security.
Your server will almost surely end up forwarding your message to other servers insecurely.
XMPP also struggles with binary blobs (images) etc.