XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF)

The XMPP Standards Foundation (also known as the XSF and formerly the Jabber Software Foundation) is an independent, nonprofit standards development organisation whose primary mission is to define open protocols for presence, instant messaging, and real-time communication and collaboration on top of the IETF’s Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).

The XSF also provides information and infrastructure to the worldwide community of Jabber/XMPP developers, service providers, and end users. In addition, the XSF administers the Jabber Trademark Licensing Program.

At the core of the XSF is its elected Membership who, in turn, elect a Council (the technical leadership) and Board (the business leadership). The Board also appoints various work teams and roles.

The Board

The Board of Directors of the XMPP Standards Foundation oversees the business affairs of the organisation. As elected by the XSF membership, the Board of Directors consists of the following individuals:

• Dave Cridland is an independent consultant for Extensible Messaging Ltd, working mostly on XMPP-based messaging things for a number of clients. This isn’t his first time on the Board, and he has been on the XMPP Council for a number of years as well. Will nobody ever learn? He has worked extensively on multiple XMPP server projects, including Isode’s M-Link, Ignite Realtime’s Openfire, and his own Metre project. His hobbies include working on XMPP servers, which is just as well, and writing about himself in the third person, which is really coming into its own right now. Drop him a message via XMPP.
• Edward Maurer is working in engineering automation (energy sector, non-XMPP) and is volunteering in XMPP since more than five years already. Since 2020 he is thriving the XSF Communication Team. Besides successfully supporting the XMPP Community and its projects he is co-author of XMPP Providers. Find the contact and details in the XMPP wiki profile.
• Ralph Meijer is the lead developer of several Jabber-related projects and services, including Wokkel and the XMPP support in Twisted, the Idavoll pubsub component, and Planet Jabber. Ralph has been member of the XMPP Council from 2004 to 2013 and Director since 2013. You can find him on Twitter and chat with him on XMPP.
• Florian Schmaus is a software developer and long-standing contributor to the XMPP community. He is leading the development of Smack, an XMPP client library targeting Android and Java. His interests include operating systems, parallel runtime systems, and systems software in general. Fittingly, Florian also conducts research in this area and helps students unravel the black box inside modern computing systems. Besides that, he enjoys spending time with his family.
• Arne-Bruen Vogelsang is the founder and lead developer of monocles. Whereas he is maintaining two public XMPP servers and monocles chat is a known XMPP chat client for Android, he’s also working on other non-XMPP related open source projects. During his studies he learned a lot about the need for more ethical and fair digital and technological solutions. He also experienced the business side for founding a sustainable company providing open source solutions. He advocates and supports XMPP and open source since many years and is an official XSF member since 2023. You can contact him via email or XMPP.

The Council

The XMPP Council is the technical steering group that approves XMPP Extension Protocols. The Council is governed by the XSF Bylaws and XEP-0001, as augmented by various policies and procedures.

The Council is elected by the members of the XMPP Standards Foundation. In the interest of transparency, chatroom logs and mailing list archives are available (anyone can subscribe to the mailing list, but only Council members can post). The Council meets once a week in a chatroom - anyone can join in, comments from the floor are welcome.

The Council consists of the following individuals:

• Dan Caseley is a regular contributor to the Openfire project, and an author and contributor in Openfire’s plugin ecosystem. Initially involved in XMPP implementations at work, Dan is now a contributor in both his professional and personal life as part of the OSS community.
• Daniel Gultsch is the maintainer of the Android client Conversations and operates an XMPP domain hosting service. He has also (co-) created several XEPs. Contact information can be found on his website.
• Marvin Wissfeld is one of the maintainers of the XMPP client Dino. He has contributed to several XEPs and various free software projects related to XMPP.
• Stephen Paul Weber is one of the maintainers at the Sopranica Project which includes the Cheogram Services and Client and also JMP. Feel free to contact him via his Jabber ID.
• Jérôme Poisson is the maintainer of the Libervia client, including several components and notably an ActivityPub ⟺ XMPP gateway, and the Libervia Pubsub component (an advanced PEP/Pubsub service). He is also the author of several XEPs and a strong advocate for non-IM use cases, particularly those based on pubsub.