I have committed a sin

Yesterday I committed a sin. I registered an account for Microsoft messenger. The reason is that some colleges using MSN and one of them will be home for child care after X-mas and work one day from home. So we needed a faster way to communicate.
I could not commit the sin without trouble so it looks like Microsoft and I agree with each other that our road must not be crossed unnecessarily. When I tried to install Microsofts own client it required that my client got upgraded. Since my computer at work is upgraded centrally I could not do that without installing Microsofts update client. If I do that I am on my own and my sysadmins will just wipe out my disk if I asks for help. The solution was to install Pidgin. The next problem was to register for a passport account, since I do not want a Hotmail account. It took a while to find the right place.

After an hour or so I was up and running. I must point out that I only use MSN for work, not for pleasure. The main reason I feel that using MS messenger is a sin is that the protocol is closed and not an open standard.

Our build continuous system support sending messages through Jabber/XMPP with results from the build. I hope I will get inspired to set up a Jabber server at work. My colleagues have promised to convert to jabber when I got it to work.

Can anyone recommend a good Jabber-server that is good, easy to install and runs on Linux?

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