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Google Communications Spam The Internet

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."
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Google Reinstates Federated Jabber/XMPP Instant Messaging

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  • Been thinking of setting up my own jabber server, so this is definitely good news.
    • by ledow ( 319597 ) on Friday April 19, 2013 @08:58AM (#43492849) Homepage

      It's not hard. Barely takes ten minutes. We use one in work, tied to our domain.

      Install Openfire on your servers (Windows/Linux). Set it up. Install Pidgin on your clients (or whatever you want to use). Set them up.
      Stick a SRV record in your DNS (optional, the above is fine for an internal system).
      Done.

      • by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Friday April 19, 2013 @09:13AM (#43493081)

        ++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.

      • Install Openfire on your servers

        Or Prosody if you don't want to waste lots of resources for a server that will only have you and your parents on it.

        • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

          What do you mean lots of resources?
          I have openfire running for hundreds of people, in a VM with 512MB of ram.

          • in a VM with 512MB of ram.

            I only have a VPS at my disposal with about half that amount of RAM (which also has to do other things).

            • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

              For only a couple users you would be fine.

              • For only a couple users you would be fine.

                I ran OpenFire for years with only one user. It was always extremely tight, and sometimes too tight (with crucial processes getting killed because they ran out of memory). Your mileage will most probably vary, but for me, I had no choice and had to switch.

                • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

                  If prosody works for you, no reason not to use it.

                  They have gotten a lot better about memory wastage.

      • I've been using eJabberd for about a decade but I've heard a few people mention OpenFire recently. What advantage does it have?
    • by ron_ivi ( 607351 )

      definitely good news.

      How can we thank them in a way they'd notice?

      I'm very happy they did it - but hope they don't just undo it again.

    • I'll be completely happy when they get presence to work too. No idea what that requires on their end...

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Start using Jabber servers and clients anyway. Now that CISPA has blown through the house, it's bound to blow through the do nothing jack-off's in the senate as well. At that point, as other articles have put it, Google and other online services will essentially be forced into the role of secret police for the state...a role they'll happily accept, as Google is one of the companies pushing for CISPA to pass. As long as the money's rolling in they don't care where it comes from, the "do no evil" slogan is ju

    • by heypete ( 60671 )

      This has nothing to do with directly using Google, this has to do with non-Google users being blocked from sending presence invites to Google users.

      Even if you run your own server, there's a lot of people who use Google and it makes sense to be able to communicate properly with them if needed.

  • by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Friday April 19, 2013 @09:08AM (#43492993)

    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.

    • I though I remembered that outbound invites weren't fully working a few weeks ago either. And it still doesn't work at all with Google Apps accounts.

  • I can confirm that it works for regular Gmail users. It doesn't seem to work with Google Apps, however...

  • Good move (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Friday April 19, 2013 @09:50AM (#43493591)
    I thought the blocking of external clients was a bad move, setting up a walled garden chat. This has reassured me that they really were looking at the spam issue, bit blocking competition.
  • by akanouras ( 1431981 ) on Friday April 19, 2013 @12:40PM (#43495409)

    Hope some Googler can answer this:

    Why is Google not enabling STARTTLS on S2S XMPP connections?

    It baffles me that emails I send to Gmail users are more safe from eavesdropping than IMs.

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