Re: IETF-LA

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Fri, 20 Mar 1998 15:39:28 -0600


One comment on Josh's comments. It's essential to distinguish between "chat" or even
"instant messaging" and presence. RVP doesn't really have anything to do with chat at
all. The instant messaging part of RVP is a pragmatic concession for the need for
lowest-common-denominator interoperability. Really, presence and interaction are
conceptually orthogonal. Realistically, interoperable clients without instant messaging
are uninteresting. Also, there's a good argument along the lines of instant messaging
being a special-case form of notification.

Historically, the "call to standards" in this area originated at Jerry Michalski's Retreat
'97, last August --- long before the Netscape deal. I do think the effort was really
accelerated (at least on the part of some of the players) around the time of that deal.

$0.02,

jb