The Jive Messenger project has released version 2.2.0. Jive Messenger is an Open Source Java based server for comprehensive group chat and instant messaging (IM), which is based on the open XMPP protocol.

Some of the new features of Messenger 2.2 are Server to Server (s2s) Support, External Components, Improved LDAP, Phone Integration and Web-based Presence. For more information about the release, view the project status report.

Does Jive Messenger provide gateway facilities on to the other IM networks (i.e. MSN, ICQ, etc)?

It is told here:
http://www.jivesoftware.org/messenger/whats_new_2_2.jsp

External Components
XMPP external components are now supported. External components connect over the network to any server that supports the external component protocol. A large list of existing external components has been tested with Jive Messenger, such as gateways to MSN, and AIM.

Is this product appropriate for adding group chat to my web site? If not, does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks

Not really.. technically you can use it, since you can create group chats on a Jabber/Jive server, but thats not the focus. For you, you would want some sort of web-based or applet-based chat interface, and there are many around that do that.

There are even web-based frontends for IRC servers.. so you have alot of options for a basic group chat.

If you wanted to require that your site users download a Jabber client (or they have it most likely with Linux and OS X), then this could work for you.

There is a web based client for jive at:

http://jwchat.sourceforge.net/

Check out Javalobby chat function, that's exactly what they're using.

With Messenger's 2.2 external component support people have been able to connect to other IM network via PyAIMt, PyICQt and PyMSN. Development is currently under way on a couple of Messenger plugins that will allow it to connect to other IM networks by simply dropping a jar into the Messenger plugin directory.

Isn't jive software known for taking away the open source once they get something popular?

well.. they did it with jiveforum.

I probably will not be the one using it unless I want to pay some money for upgrades later on down the line.

my $.02.

Isn't jive software known for taking away the open source once they get something popular?

We (Jive Software) have been doing Open Source XMPP projects for several years now. In my mind, that should provide some level of credibility. :)

But yes, five years ago we did stop working on an open source project so we could build a new commercial version and start a company (which was discussed with the community in detail at the time). It was a painful process that we wouldn't care to repeat, which is why we keep a strong distinction between our Open Source and commercial work. For XMPP/Jabber, Jive Messenger and Smack are Open Source building blocks that quite a few other people happen to find useful. We use both projects in our commercial product Jive Live Assistant.

Regards,
Matt

And they didn't take it away, they just took it commercial. You can still grab the OS version at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/meinds/

--Tim