There's also http://matrix.org ; though it's not going down the RFC route (at the moment at least).
</blatant self-promotion>
There seems to be this general assumption at the moment that a) XMPP is the only open chat protocol about and b) its dead, so everyone decides that the only logical course of action is to write and use custom proprietary protocol. This, of course, massively sucks from a UX perspective where I end up having 100s of identities and apps and logins that I use (semi-)regularly to not just chat with people, but also comment on articles, discuss things on mailing lists etc.
(Long time lurker, only a reader till now)
I've been looking for something like matrix for quite some time now (albeit probably in the wrong direction) and it seems like a really cool project. I've been wanting to build a chat application on top of a chat protocol like that for ages! Its a big boost to finally get started. Thanks!
Edit: whoops, I had commented once before, it was just so long ago that I forgot about it!
</blatant self-promotion>
There seems to be this general assumption at the moment that a) XMPP is the only open chat protocol about and b) its dead, so everyone decides that the only logical course of action is to write and use custom proprietary protocol. This, of course, massively sucks from a UX perspective where I end up having 100s of identities and apps and logins that I use (semi-)regularly to not just chat with people, but also comment on articles, discuss things on mailing lists etc.