By Jim Wagner, InternetNews.com
The Internet Engineering Task
Force has tasked proponents for three instant messaging
proposals to find common ground by Aug. 21.
But how these standards will fare when they go public is
another matter, with America Online
Inc.’s proposal discounted from proposal
consideration.
The group of nine members represent backers from the different
proposals the IETF considered. Three come from the IMXP camp, three
are supporters of the Session Initiation Protocol proposal, and the
other three make up the Group 2, or general category, proposal
team.
Jonathan Rosenberg, one of the nine members and SIP proponent,
said the industry is looking at them to find a common IM
solution.
“Obviously, the industry does want a standard and that’s what
their looking to the IETF for,” Rosenberg said. “So the pressure is
on us to prove that this group of nine can do that. If you can’t
reconcile (the different proposals) you really got to show why that
is.”
AOL (NYSE:AOL) has
nearly 130 million users on its AIM and ICQ instant messaging
products, but its proposal at the 48th IETF meeting was rejected
because it merely outlined how other IM products could interconnect
with its current services.
The Internet service provider has been accused of dragging its
feet when asked to make its IM products compatible with other
company’s offerings. According to AOL, security issues prevent its
servers from accepting incoming messages from other IM services,
which would take about a year to resolve.
Dave Crocker, subgroup member who backs the IMXP proposal, said
that while the IETF can name a standard, the market eventually
determines which standard is accepted.
“From the experience we have in the IETF, it turns out that real
practice in the real world pretty much bears that eventually you
will get one winner,” Crocker said. “It’s more through market
forces and less through arbitrary political decisions by fiat in a
standards body.
AOL maintains it will abide by the standards proposed by the
IETF, but whether it will be incorporate in a timely fashion
remains to be seen.
In July, a coalition of companies assembled to organize
IMUnified, an industry effort to integrate the companies different
IM platforms. It is made up of IM heavyweights AT&T Corp.(NYSE:T),
Yahoo!, MSN Internet and Tribal Voice.
All have at one point tried to gain access for its users to
AOL’s AIM and all were rejected, in what AOL called “hacker”
attacks. The coalition’s attempts to include AOL were rebuffed, who
instead told members to support AOL’s IM platform.
IMUnified plans to incorporate its technology with whatever
standard is eventually proposed by the IETF.