[dwaite]

Jabber was written by making things up as we wrote the code, and then pitching a prototype to a core group for revisions.

XMPP didn't really pitch any client or server protocol breaking changes.

Since the messages themselves were just addressed XML elements, we were able to do revisions over time, such as the first group chat being replaced by MUC or adding in the ability for XHTML-formatted rich text.