Sean Egan Application 2006

My name is Sean Egan. I'm 24 years old, and currently live in Seattle, Washington. I am employed by Google, Inc., where I work on the Google Talk team and I also lead development on Gaim, a popular open-source IM client. I have been deeply involved in instant messaging for as long as it's existed, and I am applying for new membership into the Jabber Software Foundation.

Google Talk
Since September '05, I've been working for Google on the Google Talk team. Google Talk is a public XMPP service fully dedicated to openness. In addition to letting users and other servers connect to the gmail.com domain with any compliant software they choose, the Google Apps For Your Domain program easily allows any domain owner to have Google Talk servers host XMPP services for their domain. One of my major responsibilities at Google is contributing to the development and standardization of the Jingle protocol: the nascent XEPs defining the establishment of out-of-band peer-to-peer sessions (notably voice) between XMPP users.

I am listed, with others, as an author on five of the Jingle XEPs. In contributing to these XEPs, I've represented the entire Google Talk team, summarizing their thoughts on various design decisions. I've also worked on documenting various Google-specific extensions to XMPP (e.g. Gmail notifications) and will continue to document and introduce Google extensions into the standards process as appropriate.

In addition to participating in the standards process, I maintain and help develop a library called libjingle, which is the Google Talk client's implementation of Jingle released under a BSD style license. In the next few months, I intend to improve this library by matching the Jingle XEPs as well as improving the community aspects of the project.

Gaim
Since 2001, I've led the development of Gaim : a popular open-source, cross-platform, IM client with support for numerous protocols, including Jabber. My experience on Gaim has made me intimately familiar with XMPP as well as many other popular IM protocols. In addition the Gaim client, Gaim provides a library known as "libgaim," which allows for development of alternate UIs based on Gaim's backend. Two of the more prominent UIs include AdiumX and Meebo. According to numbers released by Google, Gaim's Jabber code is responsible for more than 60% of third-party client connections to the service.

I am not primarily responsible for most of Gaim's Jabber code, but I have made notable contributions to it. Recently, my changes have been centered largely on XMPP compatibility issues revealed by testing against Google Talk servers. After the Jingle XEPs mature and Gaim releases version 2.0.0, I intend to make Jingle support my top priority in Gaim.

Goals
I am applying for membership because I want to help improve the state of standards-based IM and to further strengthen the relationship between Google and the JSF. I want to help Jingle grow, mature, and proliferate into a well-established, widely-implemented protocol. I want to help advance XMPP and promote its continued adoption.

Contact me!
E-mail/JID: seanegan@google.com