iChat Server is a component of Mac OS X Server

Mac OS X Server

Mac OS X Server is a Unix server operating system from Apple Inc. The server edition of Mac OS X is architecturally identical to its desktop counterpart, except that it includes work group management and administration software tools...

 from Apple Inc. It was first introduced with the release of version 10.4 of the server

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

 software, and was upgraded to version 2 with the release of Mac OS X Server 10.5 in October 2007.

iChat Server was originally based on jabberd 1.4.3 and is named after Apple's iChat

IChat

iChat is an instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its Mac OS X operating system. It has audio, video and screen-sharing capabilities as well as text messaging...

 online chat

Online chat

Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...

 client software.

Version 2 of the software is based on jabberd2 2.0s9

Jabberd2

jabberd2 is an XMPP server, written in the C language and licensed as Free software under the GNU General Public License. It was inspired by jabberd14.- Former developers :* The project leader was Justin Kirby....

 and supports server federation, which allows chat clients to talk directly with other systems that support XMPP

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML . The protocol was originally named Jabber, and was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999 for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging , presence...

, such as Google Talk

Google Talk

Google Talk is a freeware voice over Internet protocol client application offered by Google Inc. The first beta version of the program was released on August 24, 2005...

. It also supports server-based chat archiving.

External links

• iChat Server on Apple's Mac OS X Server website
• Source code on Apple's Open Source website.