AOL May Start Using Jabber Soon

In the last months, it seems more and more software companies set their eyes on various open source projects, intending to buy them. Leaving the claims of the open source movement, I am sure most companies or people developing open source projects thought at least once about being paid serious amounts of money for their work, but if we leave the financial part aside, there's plenty to gain for everyone. Today, it's about AOL and Jabber...

AOL is testing Jabber with their AIM software, so you'll be able to talk with people using this communication protocol without having to install various "spooky" applications, such as Pidgin, Psi or iChat(don't get me wrong, I thing these applications are great, and I use Pidgin on a regular basis, but most people I know consider me a freak for this reason).

Obviously, there's one big question - why use Jabber? Basically, it's about security and the ability to log in from multiple locations, and then set the Jabber server to send the messages to one of these locations, according to their priority ranking (for example, you could receive messages from co-workers only on your office PC, and those from friends, on your mobile).

On the other hand, another strong point of the Jabber network is that no central server exists, and anyone could have a Jabber server, set up to fulfill the needs of its users.

At this time, it seems the AOL/ICQ test server using Jabber doesn't work without any problem, so we should see what happens with this in the coming weeks. Hopefully, the 10 years-old Jabber will finally get the recognition it deserves, and a much wider range of users will take advantage of its features.