[TriLUG] IM server solution for MS Messenger clients

[Matt Pusateri]

Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
> On 9/5/07, Jeff The Riffer <riffer at vaxer.net> wrote:
>   
>> Purely political reasons. Without going into detail, I'm trying to circumvent
>> territorial folks who would throw a screaming fit about changing the end-users
>> desktop config.
>>     
>
> Do the end users have any control at all over what they get on their
> desktops? If so, read on. If not, plz2ignorekthx. Without knowing the
> political landscape, it's hard to know how to help you argue for what
> you'd like to see.
>
> Identify the cool kid(s) and win her/him/them over on Pidgin. If you
> can't do that, figure out who can. Don't push Pidgin on people; figure
> out how to get them to demand it. It's really pretty awesome software
> when you think about it, so that shouldn't be terribly difficult if it
> gets pitched to them right.
>
> In my mind I hear you say, "But they're Neanderthals! They'll never
> listen." If you've ended up there and can't have good,
> mutually-respectful discourse with them, then your problem is not a
> software problem and no software, no matter how good, will fix it.
>
> Next question: why the desire for in-house chat? Was that your idea?
> If so, what problem are you trying to address? I'm asking not to be
> snarky but to save you headaches.
>
> When I showed up at ibiblio, this is what I found:
>
> * a wiki page listing people's chat nicks and associated networks
> (often several for a given person)
> * people using a mix of gaim, adium, google talk embedded in gmail
> * no in-house chat server
> * one coworker passionately opposed to the idea of in-house IRC
>
> I decided to make it my mission to win everybody over to at least
> using the campus jabber, jabber.unc.edu. I failed. I failed because,
> in the minds of my coworkers, there wasn't a real problem that needed
> to be addressed, and jabber.unc.edu didn't add any compelling
> functionality for them. I think it's fair and okay that I failed to
> win everybody over, though most of the office does now at least sign
> on to their jabber.unc.edu accounts, so if I choose to, *I* can talk
> to them over the campus jabber.
>
> So! Provide your users with compelling functionality or convince them
> that the problem you see really is a problem and the change won't be
> painful. If you don't get buy-in from the people they all respect,
> give up.
>
> That's my rant. Maybe I'll write a book...
>
> Cheers,
>   
I would think the argument for in house chat would be you can secure it 
better, enforce encryption, and message confidential information because 
it stays on your network.  Or at least that's why I'm putting one in at 
my work :)

Matt P.