Guus der Kinderen Application 2026

From XMPP WIKI
Jump to navigation Jump to search

This is the 2026 Q2 re-application for XSF membership of Guus der Kinderen, a software engineer from Rosmalen, the Netherlands.

My previous applications can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. You'll find that this application resembles previous ones.

Personalia & Contact Details

Affiliations

  • Owner of Goodbytes, that primarily takes on Openfire-related development and consultancy work
  • Board member of the Ignite Realtime Foundation
  • Member of the XSF Board (2025–2026 term)

Motivation

Over the years, I've been working on XMPP-related implementations on and off, both voluntary as well as in a professional capacity. My primary reason for applying for XSF membership is to contribute back to the community that has provided me with a lot of opportunities over these years.

In recent years, my involvement with the XMPP ecosystem has continued to grow, both through implementation work and through governance roles. In addition to my ongoing work in the Ignite Realtime community, I currently serve on the XSF Board (2025-2026 term), where I help support the operational and strategic direction of the XMPP Standards Foundation.

Background

I got introduced to XMPP in the early 2000s, when I was working on my thesis. That thesis later evolved into Nimbuzz, where I was employed for a number of years.

We based Nimbuzz on Openfire, a project that I continued to support in my spare time after I left the company. After Jive Software slowly but surely pulled out, I became the de facto project lead for Openfire. Although somewhat hard to combine with my daytime jobs at the time (didn't have a remote connection to XMPP), I helped keep the project and the broader Ignite Realtime community afloat until dwd stepped up.

Around 2015, I leaped and/or plunged, quitting my job and starting a business of my own: Goodbytes (dot nl). Now that I'm self-employed, I find myself more and more involved in projects that relate to XMPP (Yey). As a result, the amount of time that I spend on XMPP-related activities has increased a lot. Being more active than ever, and having to owe part of my paycheck to XMPP, I thought it to be good to contribute back to the community, starting by signing up as an XSF member (okay, I started by fixing a link on the xmpp.org website, but this is the next best thing, right?)

Contributions to the XMPP community

Outside of the XSF, I've been contributing to XMPP as a member of the Ignite Realtime community. I continue to be heavily involved in the development and maintenance of Openfire, where I act as project lead and one of the primary maintainers. This work includes developing new functionality, reviewing and merging community contributions, maintaining the plugin ecosystem, and coordinating releases.

For Ignite Realtime, apart from my continued work on Openfire and other projects, I was involved in revitalizing the Spark client project and creating a legal entity for that community, serving on the board of the Ignite Realtime Foundation.

In addition to project maintenance, I regularly contribute to improvements in interoperability and testing within the XMPP ecosystem. Examples include contributions to the XMPP network graph, the XMPP Interop Testing project, and various other tools and utilities that help visualize or improve the health of the XMPP federation.

Through my work on Openfire and related tooling, I regularly implement and test support for XMPP Extension Protocols (XEPs), helping to bring standards work into widely deployed implementations.

References to much of my work can be found through my GitHub profile.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/index.php?title=Guus_der_Kinderen_Application_2026&oldid=16462"