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This piece is a good history lesson of why XMPP failed to gain momentum and a cautionary tale on how companies can commandeer open, “public good” protocols.
My experience with XMPP was limited: in an unpublished project, I wired GMail to MSN Messenger though the protocol. I know enough to know XMPP as a precursor of things being re-invented (my other favorite that falls into category is NNTP, and even e-mails to a certain extent.)
From the post, it sounds like the danger arise of an intentional commercial protocol fork that designed to compete with the original protocol. I wonder if there are things to learn (like governing model) from protocols that so far had survived risk of fragmentation.
Something to dig further.