This incident discredits the FSF's legitimate and usually very good flagging of internet misdeeds.
The FSF started out by saying Google was blocking some federation between domains [and the sky is falling down]. The implication being that because they are big there must be some malicious intent.
Google had mentioned the problem on the XMPP operators lists and, their messaging team are a pleasure to work with (we send a lot of buddycloud messages to Gtalk users over their XMPP network). This FSF post created a shitstorm for no reason.
Of course we should aim for full federation. But let's look at Google's position: When (I'm guessing here) 1% of your XMPP traffic is federated, it's in Google's interest to look after their existing users and protect them from a bunch of spam than to federate with smaller domains. It's a no brainier - not an evil plan.
PS: It's called XMPP. Jabber is a trademark owned by Cisco.
From the original article that you mischaracterise:
"According to a public mailing list thread, Google is doing this on purpose, to handle a spam problem. We sympathize; we spend a disappointing amount of energy combating similar problems on the services we provide for the free software community. But the solution can't be something that breaks legitimate communication channels, and especially not in a way that enhances Google's disproportionate control of the network."
The FSF started out by saying Google was blocking some federation between domains [and the sky is falling down]. The implication being that because they are big there must be some malicious intent. Google had mentioned the problem on the XMPP operators lists and, their messaging team are a pleasure to work with (we send a lot of buddycloud messages to Gtalk users over their XMPP network). This FSF post created a shitstorm for no reason.
Of course we should aim for full federation. But let's look at Google's position: When (I'm guessing here) 1% of your XMPP traffic is federated, it's in Google's interest to look after their existing users and protect them from a bunch of spam than to federate with smaller domains. It's a no brainier - not an evil plan.
PS: It's called XMPP. Jabber is a trademark owned by Cisco.