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Gaston Dombiak

It took us some time but we finally made it. The Enterprise Edition plugin has been broken into smaller open source plugins as mentioned in the Turning Openfire Enterprise into an open source product blog post.

 

The new plugins can be found here:

 

With these new plugins the total number of official open source plugins is now 17. If we add the clustering plugin that is commercial and the 3 beta plugins that includes the popular Red5 plugin the total number of plugins comes up to 21. Finally, more plugins can be found in the Non-Jive Openfire Plugins document.

 

Enjoy,

 

The Openfire Team

Tags: planetjabber, openfire-enterprise, open-source, openfire


May 13, 2008 6:49 PM Daniel Henninger Daniel Henninger  says:

workgroup API that is used by fastpath on the client side will be available in smackx soon.  webchat is taking a bit longer because it's amazingly complex to build compared to the other plugins.    mostly I haven't had a lot of time to devote to it yet, so those are coming soon in the land of open source!  =)
May 14, 2008 1:14 AM wroot wroot  says in response to Daniel Henninger:

great, will test Client Control today, though i see it still has some enterprise parts and there is no download links for new Spark builds. Btw, there is already a feature request for Client Control and Spark, to disable transcripts for all Spark clients in network;)
May 14, 2008 3:48 AM Vishu Vishu  says:

great

May 14, 2008 4:59 AM yaya yaya  says in response to Vishu:

thank The Openfire Team!
May 14, 2008 8:13 AM modulok modulok  says:

The Client Control Plugin needs to fix a 'permitted clients' error. Gaim is now Pidgin.
May 14, 2008 8:48 AM modulok modulok  says in response to modulok:

A thought on the client features for the plugin. Would it be possible to add options to enable/disable Spark only items such as tasks, notes, and even invite/join conference? Small companies who only have one location probably wouldn't need a chat conference room.
May 14, 2008 8:57 AM Sander Sander  says in response to modulok:

Coccinella also isn't listed, but I already made a fix myself. Available here: http://coccinella.im/bypassing-openfire-client-control

 

It's really peace of cake to fake the client name...IMO this module is not worth much if you want to only allow whitelisted software.
May 14, 2008 9:05 AM modulok modulok  says in response to Sander:

you know, that you could have just added "other client" and that probably would have allowed Coccinella to connect.
May 14, 2008 9:07 AM Daniel Henninger Daniel Henninger  says in response to modulok:

Doesn't really matter, sander is on a quest to say that the plugin is useless, even though a number of folk appreciate it. 

May 14, 2008 10:36 AM Sander Sander  says in response to Daniel Henninger:

jadestorm, it's useless if you expect the module to block all clients which you didn't restricted access.

 

Anyway, some web admins in the past also thought restricting access to a website for a specific web browser was a good idea. Luckily, nearly all of them learnt that they were wrong.

 

Anyway, if people want to have real control over client access, support for client certificates would be a much more interesting feature for this module...hint, hint!

May 14, 2008 10:39 AM Sander Sander  says in response to Sander:

Oh yes, and I forgot to add that this number of folk maybe appreciated it because they didn't knew it was so easy to "hack"...maybe the appreciation levels will decline when they read my post

May 14, 2008 10:45 AM wroot wroot  says in response to Sander:

sanderd, i'm still appreciating. though, maybe we will never use client restrictions, because all our employees are already restricted. But maybe in future we will need that, and such module is far enough for the novice users to stop trying.
May 14, 2008 10:46 AM Daniel Henninger Daniel Henninger  says in response to Sander:

Actually, as I specified before, in a controlled environment, it makes it easy to help people not log in with unapproved clients.  IE, sure you can hack things to get in, but if you download some client that your IT doesn't want people using, and it fails to connect, that's an easy way for the employee to go "oh yeah  I'm not allowed to use this" instead of being let in and using something and then later being told "you weren't supposed to be using that".  Clearly it's possible to circumvent it, but it does provide a good reminder.

 

I was going to suggest adding Coccinella to the list, but at this point you've confused people who might read your article and go hacking Coccinella to pretend it's Psi.  Effectively the entire plugin is "suggestions", not enforcements.  If you feel like writing client certificate support, be our guest.  And hey, if people want to hide the fact that they're using Coccinella and instead announce to the world that they're using Psi, then more ++usage stats for Psi it is!
May 14, 2008 10:49 AM benr benr  says:

After downloading and installed the clustering plugin, I get the following error on Server > Clustering:

 

Clustering not available

 

Clustering license is not valid. You need to update your license to enable clustering.
May 14, 2008 11:02 AM Ryan Graham Ryan Graham  says in response to Daniel Henninger:

Daniel, I know it's impossible to please everyone but maybe you should add a line or two to the readme of the client control plugin to simply state what you wrote above: That the plugin is designed to be used in a controlled environment and that determined/sophisticated/knowledgeable users may be able to figure out a way to circumvent  it. And that if an organization is determined to really lock down their environment they should simply turn off and unplug everyones computers.

May 14, 2008 11:04 AM Todd Getz Todd Getz  says in response to Sander:

You point is moot, in that we can easily disable your precious Coccinella via our Active Directory Policy.  The plugin has may other facets that more than make up for the fact that a program like Coccinella allows you to spoof as another client.  If that blog post was not there how many average users do you think would discover this on their own.  How many companies/organizations allow people to install any random piece of software?  If you choose to do this on your computer go for it.  Quite frankly this in conjunction with the other protection already in place on our domain is more than enough.
May 14, 2008 11:05 AM Daniel Henninger Daniel Henninger  says in response to Ryan Graham:

That's a good point Ryan.  We should make it clear that it's possible to circumvent.  I like the turn stuff off and unplug everyone's computers.  LOL!
May 14, 2008 11:12 AM Sander Sander  says in response to Daniel Henninger:

Well, I hope then that my post made clear to people that the usefulness of restricting clients using this plugin is only as being a reminder. My point is that it is not useful as a tool for enforcement or to prevent malware clients.

 

I don't care about wrong usage stats. The user is not interested in usage stats. Also, when you collect data for usage stats you will see that there is something wrong with your data as there is no Psi client with version number 0.96.8 of which Entity Capabilities say it is Coccinella

May 14, 2008 1:19 PM Gaston Dombiak Gaston Dombiak  says in response to Sander:

Hey sanderd,

 

I'm glad that you liked the new client control plugin. Besides of controlling which XMPP clients are allowed to connect the plugin also provides other useful features as described in the readme.html. I hope that you liked them too.

 

Regards,

 

  -- Gato
May 15, 2008 8:46 AM benr benr  says:

Two things:

 

As I posted above, the clustering plugin is still requiring a license.  Is the link above to the newly open-sourced version?  Also, the clustering plugin still shows up in the commercial section of the list of available plugins.

 

I seem to be unable to uninstall the client control plugin. 

 

Thanks,

Ben
May 15, 2008 8:49 AM Todd Getz Todd Getz  says in response to benr:

The clustering plugin is not opensource.  This a product Jive pays a licensing fee to distribute.  If you are having a problem with another plugin, may I suggest posting in the community as this is not a discussion thread.  Please do not reply to this comment.
May 15, 2008 9:14 AM benr benr  says in response to Todd Getz:

Thanks, mtstravel.  I'll go ahead and reply, though, since there seem to have been plenty discussion on this thread already

 

If the clustering plugin hasn't been open-sourced, the blog post is pretty misleading.  It starts by saying that the Enterprise plugin has been broken into several open-sourced plugins and then proceeds to list them, including the clustering plugin.  Also, the previous blog post (Open-Even-More-Fire 3.5.1 Released!) mentions that "These are the first two pieces of the open sourced Enterprise plugin. Client management is coming very soon, as is clustering." and there is some discussion on that entry's comments of open-sourcing the clustering plugin (mainly the comments by dombiak_gaston.

 

So, I guess the question still stands:  has the/a clustering plugin been open-sourced?

 

Thanks,

Ben
May 15, 2008 12:27 PM wroot wroot  says in response to benr:

Ben, it is not open-source.

 

After the list there is:

>If we add the clustering plugin that is commercial

 

Maybe, for newcomers that blog post is misleading. Older community is aware about the clustering licensing issues.
May 15, 2008 1:17 PM benr benr  says in response to wroot:

Thanks, wroot.  I knew about the licensing issues, but this post and some comments to the previous post had me (obviously) somewhat confused.

 

Thanks,

Ben
May 17, 2008 8:14 AM LG LG  says in response to wroot:

Hi Oleg,

 

I still wonder why one needs a Jivesoftware license and not an Oracle license for clustering. Jivesoftware could release the plugin as open source and make use of the Oracle Coherence API similar to JDBC. Also the Oracle JDBC driver is not open source but it runs fine with Openfire.

 

LG
May 17, 2008 1:56 PM Maxime Maxime  says:

Nice.

 

I've tried the statistics plugin. There is a big mistake on the french translation : "Conversqtions en cours" instead of "Conversations en cours" (qwerty/azerty ? )

 

I'd like to notify too :

"Un "snapshot" de l'activité sur Openfire" => It's not good to let english words... I don't know what is the best translation... maybe "un aperçu".

 

"utilisateurs courant" => "utilisateurs courants" (plural)

 

"Group Chat: Salons" => Why both english word and its translation ? Only "Salons" it's enough.
May 18, 2008 8:23 PM Terry Terry  says:

I don't see sparkweb or fastpath in the list, even though the fastpath service is listed, it requires enterprise to be installed for the fastpath (according to the quick start guide) tab to show, which in-turn requires an Enterprise license.

 

The simplest way for open source plugins to work with enterprise functionality, is to remove the enterprise licensing, and have each commercial plugin have their own license entry.  Doing it that way ALL open source plugins will work with enterprise, but commercial plugins would require separately purchased licenses.

 

Originally, when enterprise is installed, and fastpath is accessed, enterprise would ask for license information, so, instead of enterprise asking for a license, the license entry is removed, so that open source plugins can be installed and run with enterprise, but,,,,if a commercial plugin is installed, then, when that plugin is activated, ie, run, it opens a separate license entry box, where a purchased license can be entered.
May 19, 2008 8:41 AM Daniel Henninger Daniel Henninger  says in response to Terry:

The Enterprise plugin should -not- be installed if you use the open source versions of the plugins.  The plugins will not load if you still have enterprise installed.  None of the new plugins sans clustering require a license.  Fastpath does not require a license.  The quick start guide is old and wrong apparently.  Sparkweb is also open source and available in the SparkWeb Support forum for now until we give it it's own product page.
Jun 2, 2008 6:31 AM Vinay Bagla Vinay Bagla  says:

hi jade... wen r we having .war file for Spark released... i am eagerly waiting for the same...
Jun 2, 2008 8:01 AM Daniel Henninger Daniel Henninger  says in response to Vinay Bagla:

Why would there be a .war for Spark?  Do you mean SparkWeb?  Or Fastpath webchat?  or?

 

The good news with a SparkWeb war is, I finally found the right set of ninja magic to build SparkWeb from the command line.  The bad news is, I haven't had time to clean it up into a release build.  The .war is supposed to be available when 1.0 gets released though, which I do not know a date on at this time.
Jun 3, 2008 12:30 PM Vinay Bagla Vinay Bagla  says in response to Daniel Henninger:

i meant... .war for SparkWeb...!!!
Jun 19, 2008 4:20 PM tim tim  says:

What is the pricing structure for the clustering plugin?

 

tim

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