Pavel Šimerda Application 2008

Hello Jabber people. I have recieved an offer to apply for XSF Membership.

Basic Information

My name is Pavel Šimerda and I live in Prague, Czech Republic. On the Internet, I am known as pavlix.

I am studying at the Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. In my studies, I mostly specialize in network technologies and security.

I am also a freelance programmer and I occasionally give programming and mathematics lessons.

I will say about my technology hobbies and skills later, so I'll briefly summarize my non-computer free time activities. One of my chief interests is music (I can play the piano and flute), another is sports (mainly cycling, skiing, tennis and squash). I like reading (historical novels, fantasy, ...) and travelling (I hope to travel more, in the future). I enjoy company of nice people around me :).

Programming

I did my first programming experiments at the age of nine. My first language was Pascal (Turbo Pascal on MS-DOS, then Delphi and FreePascal). Since then I tried C/C++, PHP, shell, Python and some others. And I learned that not all languages are good for everything but that usually the choice of programming language is not the most important issue.

Currently, I'm mostly using Python and C. Javascript for the web scripting as it's the only language that's in most browsers. I'm not particularly bound to any language.

Internet & Communication

I am particularly interested in open communication between people, companies and also state organizations. Several years ago I realized there's no such communication without properly designed, maintained and promoted standards.

As there was nobody to help me, I learned mostly from the Web. So I discovered IRC, then started using ICQ (which was... and still is the most popular IM in my country).

I became very interested in various open format and protocol efforts, notably web standards (including WHATWG), OpenDocument, OpenID and of course XMPP.

XMPP

I was really happy to replace ICQ and MSN with an open protocol and also to test with my own server. Right now my domain points to my friend's server so I can experiment with mine without getting offline.

I used ICQ and MSN transports but I tried to get other people to use Jabber. I mostly succeeded. But as some of my friends told me there's no one using only Jabber and not ICQ, I decided to shut down the transports and become one. That was even more successful than plain talking :).

Although there were other Czech people writing about leaving proprietary IM protocols in favor of XMPP, my blogpost (in Czech) was surprisingly successful. I revised the text and used it as a starting point for icq.xmpp.cz.

Soon after this blogpost, I was offered to start writing articles about Jabber and other technologies for abclinuxu.cz, my favourite Linux/Unix internet magazine in Czech language.

XMPP & OpenID... xmppid.net

Recently I was playing with OpenID and XMPP. I had an idea how to use Jabber ID as and OpenID. Niekie told me that I was not the first one to invent it. But as I was not happy with the other implementation, I tried it and succeeded. My proof-of-concept implementation can be found at http://xmppid.net/. Anybody can use xmppid.net/his-jabber-id as his OpenID.

My Short-Term XMPP Plans

• Continue writing articles
• Develop a new version of http://www.xmpp.cz/ and http://icq.xmpp.cz/ websites
• Improve xmppid.net and release source code of some or all of the components
• Build a set of web tools around xmppid.net (vcard, info, ...)
• Prepare some code exaples for OpenID (server, consumer)

My Long-Term XMPP Plans

• Develop a stable web-based Jabber client with MUC support and reasonable anonymous chatting
• Participate in XMPP development with special regards to privacy, security and stability (but also usability)
• Start an ipv6-enabled XMPP server (NEWLY ADDED).

Contacts

You can see my contacts page (also used as OpenID).

My JID and mail address are the same: pavlix[at]pavlix.net.

You can meet me in person at FOSDEM 2008.