We should probably take this discussion out of the list, but just in case anyone's
interested I'll give a brief summary. The BOF I mentioned is listed as APP/pipr (Presence
Information Protocol Requirements --- sic, it's supposed to be Presence Infrastructure
Protocol.) This is the evolution of the RVP (Rendezvous Protocol) discussion. There's an
immediate need among vendors of "buddy list" or presence applications to have some minimal
level of interoperability --- there're something like 20-25M users of such products out
there, and the landscape is extremely balkanized. Current protocols and proposals don't
really address the problem correctly, though there are some longer-term proposals out
there that begin to verge on solving it. What we need as a minimum is an interim
solution; long term, extensions to HTTP *might* be the right answer. RVP and what it's
evolving into (tentative name: PIP) are the current placeholder for that discussion. The
players in the standards area are my company (Activerse,) Microsoft (of course,) and Lotus
with draft submissions, and Sun and a handful of other folks participating at a high level
on the mailing list. The other buddy list vendors (ichat, Mirabilis, AOL) seem to be
taking a "wait and see" approach to standards at this time. I'd expect them to start
participating more once this thing gets to working group.
jb