For me, the most exciting thing about working on Google Talk is having the opportunity to help develop an instant messaging network based on open standards. By using XMPP, an open standard protocol, we give Google Talk users the choice of what client to use, and make it easy for developers to implement their own clients and innovative services on top of our network. From day one, everyone has been encouraged to connect to the service with any XMPP-capable client they choose.
Today, two major advances have been made in the openness of our voice capabilities. This morning, the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) introduced two new proposed extensions to XMPP, known as Jingle and Jingle Audio. These enhancements describe how to write software compatible with Google Talk's voice features and have been introduced into the JSF's standards process where they'll be reviewed and improved by the XMPP community. To make implementing these extensions even easier, we've released a library we call "libjingle."
Libjingle is the very same code Google Talk uses to negotiate, establish, and maintain peer-to-peer voice sessions, packaged as a library for other developers to use in their own projects. By incorporating Libjingle into your project, you enable its users to voice chat with other users of the Google Talk service.
I'm really thrilled to be able to release this source code to the IM development community. This holiday season, it's Jingle all the way!
Sean Egan
Software Engineer