So why should I use Jabber aka XMPP? I get that question a lot, so I decided to create an extra page for this on my blog. Here I want to explain, why you in my opinion and maybe for your own good should use jabber. Please see the references and links I give in case you want to gather further information on this topic.

1. Privacy: You don’t sign right-robbing agreements like for example: in case of ICQ, AIM or MSN. (mouse over to read the most interesting parts) With doing this, you declare nothing less, than:”Yes, I want you to own every word I chat through your system.”
2. Open Source: Through the open source code the jabber protocol is more secure than others. You can literally look at the code and see what it’s doing and a lot of people are involved to make it safe. Further you can use a lot of clients, because the protocol isn’t kept secret. It’s easy for people to make client software without annoying advertisement.
3. Companies (saving traffic or licenses): Interesting for companies is, they can run their own server and with that their own intern or extern messaging system.
4. Cryptography: You can easily crypt your messages with SSL or PGP/GPG.
5. Free (cost): However, you may never run into the danger of paying to log in to your messenger. Jabber is open and is not owned by a company. Everybody can run a server and you choose which and how many you use.
6. Stability: Jabber is still working if some servers may have problems, at MSNs networks, there just needs to be a problem with the login server to shutdown the entire network.

Links:

• Jabber Website
• Jabber Quickstart Guide
• my recommended client: Pidgin