I got way too many books for Christmas which leads to perpetual grazing: reading 10 pages of that book and 15 of that one and ultimately nowhere because you can’t concentrate on a single topic.

So a couple days ago I was reading Instant Messaging in Java, a book about Jabber. I read the introduction and the first couple chapters and was surprised to find out that Jabber isn’t really about jabberd (the compiled server written in C) but is much broader: “Jabber is an open XML protocol for the real-time exchange of messages and presence between any two points on the Internet.”[source] So Jabber is NOT a product you buy (although you can products), nor is it software (although you can download it in various forms). It’s a protocol, no different than HTTP. Anyone can write an HTTP server in any language and anyone can write a Jabber server in any language, as long as it abides by the spec.