As the year draws to a close and the holiday season surrounds us with warmth and joy, I wanted to take a moment to look back at what an incredible journey 2025 has been for the Ignite Realtime community.
This year we’ve seen so much activity, innovation, and collective effort across our projects and forums. From major releases to exciting technical explorations, the contributions from developers, documenters, testers, and users have reminded me (time and again) what makes this community special.
Looking back through the year’s blog posts and discussions, a few moments stand out:
- Openfire 5.x Series: We welcomed multiple releases within the 5.0 line. From the early beta builds to the full releases of Openfire 5.0.0 and 5.0.1, to the stability-focused 5.0.2 and most recently 5.0.3. These milestones are the result of countless hours of debugging, testing, and refinement.
- New Features & Plugins: Several new features and plugins made their way into our ecosystem, like the Push Server plugin and advancements in XEP-0483 for HTTP Online Meetings, expanding what’s possible with our projects.
- Smack Community Progress: The continued evolution of Smack was marked by the 4.5.0 Release Candidate, giving developers an even stronger foundation for building XMPP clients.
- Broadening Perspectives: Insightful posts on interoperability, WebRTC audio/video integration, and real-world use cases highlighted the vibrant technical discourse happening here.
- Community Recognition: It was also wonderful to celebrate achievements beyond our own projects - like members being elected to roles within the broader XMPP Standards Foundation.
All these efforts show not just code being written, but ideas shared, challenges overcome, and friendships formed along the way. What’s especially meaningful to me isn’t just the software we build, but how we build it: together. Whether it’s through lively technical threads, helping a newcomer in chat, or sharing a blog post that unpacks a tricky feature, this community genuinely embodies open collaboration.
The forums, blogs, and group chats are more than repositories of knowledge - they’re where we connect, learn from one another, and celebrate each success together.
So, as we step into the holidays and prepare for the new year, I want to express my deepest gratitude:
Thank you to every contributor, big or small, for your time, passion, and patience.
Thank you to those who reported bugs, wrote documentation, asked questions, or helped others find answers.
And thank you to every user who deploys, experiments with, or builds on Ignite Realtime software: you give our work purpose.
Here’s to 2026! May the coming year bring even more collaboration, innovation, and joy. Whether you’re building a new feature, solving a tricky XMPP problem, or just dropping into the group chat to say hello. We’ll be glad to see you there!
Wishing you all a happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year!