[sldev] Question: Replacing current group chat with XMPP?

[Christian Scholz / Tao Takashi (SL)]

Hi!

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 9:36 PM, Edward Artaud <edward.artaud at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to agree with Argent here, the point that this discussion is
> surfacing is that the need and desire for interoperability with XMPP
> based chat such as GTalk is generally perceived as being more pressing
> than the group and proximity use cases, even and especially for
> business use.  I think that there must be some understanding of that
> at the Lab, which is why SLim was positioned in the way that it was in
> the blog post.  One very simple way of expressing this (as a feature
> not necessarily in implementation), would be to provide an "Offline IM
> to GTalk" (or whatever other IM system) feature to complement the
> "Offline IM to Email" feature.

I also wonder if the group situation will stay that way on the long
run with OGP. Right now with only 25 groups you probably need to stay
in the big groups to stay connected. If you wouldn't have that
requirment and the whole world is more decentralized anyway I wonder
if those groups would look different. Additionally if you are more
free to join and leave without any hassle (like you might do with IRC
channels). Right now with that limit you always have to think plus I
think some groups have member restrictions because of the lag (IIRC).

But of course we also need to find a solution to support the existing
group model with those huge groups.

BTW, what are the actual numbers for the bigger ones?

So pluggability might be key and the question is how we can support
both: Some not so secure environment where you maybe can simply join
some non-SL IM system like Jabber or IRC without further identity
check and a more secure one like the one we have now where you can be
sure that "Tao Takashi at syntronik.de" (imagine this would be my full
qualified name in OGP) really is me. Additionally there might be a mix
of both but where you can distinguish not verified agents as such.

Also I think the IM service should be kept outside the AD but can ask
the AD for verification of somebody.

So that means you have to trust the IM service to do the
authentication and of course the ADs in question to answer it
correctly. The details "just" need to be worked out ;-)

Another thing I am thinking about is how we can also use service
discovery (e.g. by using XRDS-Simple or the successor protocol which
is worked on right now) for each person to check which IM service it
prefers to be contacted under.

-- Tao



>
> The SIP stuff is nice, but until I can have set Vivox to ring me up on
> a Cisco 7900 phone on my office desk, I'm not sure it's going to be
> integrated into the work experience.
>
> Ed
>
> On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 11:05 AM, Argent Stonecutter
> <secret.argent at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2008-09-07, at 12:05, Joe Miller wrote:
>>>
>>> As I indicated in a blog reply, we did design SLim to support SL group
>>> channels and proximal voice channels, both of which are fairly unique
>>> communication abstractions for Second Life.  And, you'll see support for
>>> both in a later release of SLim.  As you and others have pointed out, it
>>> would be possible to create an XMPP client-side gateway to support
>>> external IM systems, but without an easy way to handle large group
>>> channels.
>>
>> Neither group channels nor voice are essential for business in SL. Simple
>> 1:1 communication, to handle customer support, IS essential, and lack of the
>> ability to contact individual customers offline through a simple protocol
>> that can be run through firewalls and proxies has long been a sore point.
>>
>> Does SIM/SIMPLE satisfy that, or is it dependent on a rich IP environment
>> with support for UDP and reverse connections on arbitrary ports?
>>
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-- 
Christian Scholz
Tao Takashi (Second Life name)
taotakashi at gmail.com
Blog/Podcast: http://mrtopf.de/blog
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