Openfire. Reloaded.

People sometimes ask what the real benefit in open source is. It’s clearly not simply having the source code; if that were the reason, you’d write everything in-house – and while that would certainly keep me employed, it’s not the reason.

Back in 2002, a new version of Windows had recently graced the scene. Called “XP”, it wasn’t terribly popular – mostly due to compatibility issues with hardware and software. Gradually, though, the initial kinks were ironed out, due to public feedback, and the OS proved to be popular and persistent – even when subsequent releases of Windows came out.

Also in 2002, a new XMPP server was released. Called Jive Messenger, it differed from other available servers by providing a powerful and simple-to-use administrative console, based around the web. It was open sourced initially to GPL in 2005, and underwent two name changes in quick succession, becoming Openfire.

Windows XP was removed form general sale in 2008. Openfire’s Enterprise variant also ceased to be sold by Jive in 2008, in April of that year.

Windows XP finally reached its end-of-life in 2014, after many delays. Millions of users, despite plenty of warning, are now either running unsupported, or else using a series of interesting hacks to gain support from the embedded variant.

Openfire, on the other hand, ceased to be supported by Jive in April 2008 when they removed the Enterprise variant from general sale. Its users had little notice, but carried on regardless – for many of them, the lack of support from the original authors didn’t matter at all. It changed license in 2009 to the more liberal Apache license, and moved to direct community control – with little programming input from Jive. Again, this was of largely no consequence to its users. Releases kept coming, albeit fairly slowly.

A week ago, having done some work on Openfire, I was asked if I could take on the Project Lead. Rather to my surprise, Openfire has actually seen a marked upsurge in developers in recent months, so I was happy to take it on.

So despite Openfire having been end-of-lifed by its developers some 5 years before Windows XP, it still has a vibrant userbase, covering Government and Military as well as vast numbers of SMEs using it as an internal chat solution. There are still releases with not only bug fixes, but new features – and these are no small features either. Additions in support of mobile, security, and video conferencing have all been added after the original developers moved on.

As I take on the leadership of Openfire development, it occurs to me that this is the real benefit of open source – the lifetime of an open source project is defined purely by how long it remains useful to its users. If the original developers move away, the project lives on, and if someone else finds it useful to continue development, then they can. Moreover, if – like many of our customers – you find Openfire useful, you can find a friendly development team to take it on for you, and provide support.