Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

jabber is an awesome software project that aims (pun intended) to standardize the instant messenger world whether the proprietary players like it or not! jabber uses standards (revolutionary, man, whats the deal) and server side processing to do the work (for details see the jabber.org site which outlines the project and its GPL open source status!)

jabber has its own diverse features that you would expect to find with a good IM, messages, chat, file transfer, total customization and more. What sets jabber apart is the fact that is has agents that allow it to be extended and to communicate with proprietary systems from one place. jabber can talk to AOL, ICQ, MSN and EVEN GET RSS NEWS FEEDS! jabber rocks.

jabber requires you to get a client (many are avail, Linux and windoze, see jabbercentral.com) and then connect to a server for communication and processing. Also note that jabber is an open source project and you can get many different clients with different licenses and connect to different levels of service on various servers. The default server did not work to well for me, and servers are kind of scarce currently, but I did find hotjabber.com and it worked great! The default server functioned, but it had some issues with ICQ and AIM, hotjabber solved them and the "agents" for ICQ, MSN and AIM loaded perfectly (although it worked I did still have some issues with the client I was using.)

For me this is welcome stuff, I have several friends and coworkers on all of the proprietary crap and have to have multiple IMs to keep up. I prefer ICQ and this generally degenerates into "just email me" because if you dont use ICQ, I dont want to deal with it. Now I can load up jabber and talk to users on jabber, ICQ, AIM and MSN from one place (and get RSS feeds!)

This is an open source project and it is still BETA, but I got it working very quickly. There are a few bugs, but rather than bitch, get a CVS account and pitch in! This is a tremendous concept and very very useful stuff. Thanks again to all of open source and to jabber.

GET JABBER AND DUMP THAT PROPRIETARY CRAP!

UPDATE:

Thanks to GGG for the fine research, there is a very nice Windows jabber client at jabber.com.
  jabbercentral