Controversial: Have SIMPLE reached is goal? Or is it an IETF failure?

Hello,

The SIMPLE workgrup chartar says:

"The IETF has committed to 
producing an interoperable standard for these services compliant to 
the requirements for IM outlined in RFC 2779 (including the security 
and privacy requirements there) and in the Common Profile for Instant 
Messaging (CPIM) specification, developed within the IMPP working 
group."

From testing various SIP clients with SIMPLE support, I think the IETF is far away from this goal - the "interoperable" part.

I see a mixture of Proprietary, OMA and IETF documents being used in different ways for address books, presence and messaging. It is really hard to get a simple red/green indication  to work across clients using XCAP and PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY. Sharing buddy lists across clients is just not working, without loosing a lot of data or creating crashes.

I've tested BRIA, Zoiper, Blink, Jitsi on a Kamailio server. The results scare me. Due to lack of a reference profile (or the existence too many non-compatible reference profiles)  it seems like developers have tried to pick parts from various sources to create a solution that works for networks with their own clients. Most of them follow some sort of standard, but the result does not create any acceptable level of interoperability.

I think a base requirement is 

* To be able to use the same buddy list with different clients without loosing data
* To be able to add friends to the buddy list and see their presence states 

I tihnk it's time for the WG to focus on interoperability tests, document these short-comings and find ways to solve them. Otherwise we will end up with a standard that only works in single-vendor installations, which is not what I call "an interoperable standard" as is the goal in the very first paragraph of the charter. If possible invite the OMA to work with us and merge their documents with the IETF standards.

SIPit 30 in February could be a good place for a meeting and practical test, dicussion about what's missing and possibly ways forwards. Reports from such an event could be brought back to the IETF and be the basis for work to reach some level of interoperability.

Right now any multi-vendor solution based on SIMPLE is just not possible to sell, because it won't work. This means that customers that want open standards to be a guarantee of some level of vendor-independence won't get what they want.

We seriously need to fix this and get some running, interoperable code. Or just conclude with the statement "SIMPLE failed, use xmpp instead".

/O