--On Tuesday, 28 November, 2006 08:01 -0800 Dave Crocker <dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Subjectively and from my perspective, the present systems >> "feel", and sometimes actually are, much more distributed. >> But, yes, from the perspective you describe, we have advanced >> very little in terms of basic functionality. > > I believe that none of the proprietary IMs is anything other > than purely centralized. > > Having to configure multiple IM accounts, to be able to talk > to different people, doesn't feel at all 'distributed' to me, > except in the bad sense of multiple, disconnected, centralized > services. No question about it. I was thinking partially about Jabber, with interoperability between implementations and hosts, and Skype with (at least as I understand it) a fairly distributed architecture. As to the rest, I assume that, sooner or later, we will the same thing we saw with email: as functions and capabilities diverge, gateways (and multiprotocol clients) deliver only least common denominator services and get less capable, and, well,... Know anyone with a large installed base of ccMail users these days? I think there is another interesting story in the fact that multiprotocol clients seem more effective and useful, and much more widely used and deployed, for IM than their equivalents were for email. Part of it is certainly related to the fact that the usual email model is not-very-smart-MUA-> smarter-Submission-server, while the IM one, at least in terms of what the user sees, is client->client. john _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf