Boards.ie Instant Messenger

Right, this was suggested on IRC, and I decided to consider it, cos I'm looking for a project this summer.

Now I know that's it's too big for one man

Jabber/XMPP would be the protocol of choice. There are specs, discussion and requirements at www.jabber.org

This is a very rich protocol, with a lot of features which may not be needed, or which may cause hassle in terms of running a purely boards.ie service.

For example, a Jabber server is part of a relay of servers (like IRC). The basic idea is that everyone has a home server, and a login name, e.g. seamus@boards.ie (separate from any email address). From this, anyone with a login on any server can speak to anyone else with a login on any other Jabber server, e.g. seamus@boards.ie can speak to john@ibm.com. Simple enough. But two questions instantly arise in the context of boards.ie - Do we want to be able to chat across the whole Jabber network, or just within boards.ie (in which case, the @boards.ie can be removed from the username)? Also, how do we run authentication? Jabber servers allow anyone to register any nick on a server, so long as it's not taken. They can be set so that only admins create a username, but this doesn't allow for automation. In boards's case, it'd be preferable to have integration into the vb Database, so users must register with boards before they can use it, to avoid hijacking. But that may be overkill, and more hassle than it's worth (as well as undesirable for the boards.ie admins).

I was considering writing a boards.ie client in Java (for use on any OS), and using one of the available servers and hacking it up to suit our needs.

So I need discussion, offers of help, people to tell me it's worth my while, and someone to help run the whole project. As I say, it's far too much for one man........




(Incidentally, a pseudo-private boards.ie IM could be set up without having to do any work at all, using existing software, but where's the fun in that? )