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pilif
So probably, there's just no more money to make with IM or people are moving away from MSN to Facebook. Funny how becoming more and more irrelevant can make people suddenly be "interested" in open standards.
drzaiusapelord
Considering how close IE9 and IE10 are to getting web standards right, I suspect that profitability isn't the key here. Its competition.
ChrisArchitect
think one reason might be because people are accessing IM via all sorts of wacky mobile apps, to keep them using their MSN accounts, need to make the protocol accessible - XMPP the obvious way to do that
bergie
...which is probably why Facebook Chat also supports XMPP clients. Shame that they don't do federation, though.
bcx
Sweet Olark (http://www.olark.com) for Windows Live Beta on it's way :-) -- I bet we could release it in a week.
Zash
I approve of this.
rbanffy
Anyone wants to bet they'll find some way to "enhance" it?
k33l0r
It seems that they chose to "enhance" it with a proprietary authentication mechanism ("X_MESSENGER_OAUTH2"): http://www.process-one.net/en/blogs/article/details_on_msns_...

Because, you know, it would be silly if you could just use any off-the-shelf XMPP client/library...

rbanffy
Bets like mine are so easy it's not even fun.
hamidpalo
It's not an "enhancement." It uses OAuth in a completely standard way. It was done to avoid people entering their Windows Live usernames and passwords all over the place, especially now considering how much can be tied to a WL account with Win 8.

I was part of the team that did this and we went to great lengths to make sure that we were in full compliance with the relevant RFCs.

dreijerbit
What's your take on this, hamidpalo: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/messengerconne...
untog
I think the Facebook example provided in that post is exactly what they are trying to avoid- people entering their usernames and passwords into random chat clients. After all, you have no idea what they do with them.
Zash
And then they (Facebook) expect you to give them your mail- and other IM credentials.

At least they do have DIGEST-MD5 auth, so you can still login with most normal XMPP clients.

AndrewDucker
Interesting. I use Windows Live Messenger with my normal email address - andrew@ducker.org.uk.

I also use XMPP through GChat, through apps for domains on the domain ducker.org.uk

I wonder how they're going to deal with that...

cipherpunk
Most likely: "andrew@ducker.org.uk"@some-ms-xmpp-url
Zash
Apparently it's <oauth-access-token>@messenger.live.com.
ryandvm
Like Facebook, they're only using XMPP for client-to-server. That is, you can use any run of the mill Jabber client to talk to your friends on MSN. I'll be impressed if they choose to do federation (server-to-server) like Google does so that you can use your Gmail account to chat with your Hotmail friends. That would be handy.