Gaim Renamed — Now Pidgin IM

An anonymous reader writes "Announced on the Gaim mailing lists earlier today, the Gaim project is being renamed. This follows a lengthy and, unfortunately, secret legal process with AOL, which also prevented any code releases except betas. The project will now be known as Pidgin IM. Development is being migrated off of sourceforge.net as well and is now being hosted on developer.pidgin.im"

It's funny because

[by Anonymous Coward]

IM-speak is a lot like a pidgin language.

Tomorrow's headlines

[Eudial (590661)]

Tomorrow's headlines:

"AOL Instant Messenger changes name to Idgin"

For those wondering what Pidgin means

[pembo13 (770295)]

Wikipedia knows [wikipedia.org]

Once again, useful time and resources wasted on IP issues.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[by Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "Intellectual Property". It is propaganda. There are copyrights, patents, and trademarks. They are very different from each other. Anyone using the term "Intellectual Property" to group the three of them is either confused or is trying to mislead others.

Watch This speech [google.com] by Richard Stallman. Warning: it's 2 hours.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[MoxFulder (159829)]

Second time I've seen the same sentiment "useful time and resource wasted on IP issues." And I wonder, why the fuck don't all these open source dudes make a point of not trying to walk around in the exact same footsteps as the ground breakers?

How hard would it have been to not call the project Gee - AIM(tm)?

Actually, you have the chronology backwards! Originally the official "AIM" was called "AOL Instant Messenger". And GAIM was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger" in its infancy.

AOL complained, so GAIM changed its name to... "GAIM". This is the crucial point: GAIM was officially called GAIM before AIM was officially called AIM. Surprising but true. But AOL then trademarked the name AIM and has aggressively/ass-hattedly defended that trademark. Trademark law is weird... unlike patents, coming up with it first doesn't matter. And once you have a trademark, you must aggressively defend it in order to keep it.

AOL may have been total dicks in this case, but its not clear that the law gives them a lot of wiggle room in this case. GAIM is a very prominent competing product with a similar name, and so it's quite likely that they could've lost their trademark right without taking this action.

In any case, despite the name change, rest assured that Pidgin will continue to be awesome, and the official AIM client will continue to be a big piece of crap.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

Trademark law is weird... unlike patents, coming up with it first doesn't matter. And once you have a trademark, you must aggressively defend it in order to keep it.

AOL may have been total dicks in this case, but its not clear that the law gives them a lot of wiggle room in this case. GAIM is a very prominent competing product with a similar name, and so it's quite likely that they could've lost their trademark right without taking this action.

I'm no trademark lawyer, but it sure seems to me that instead of being total dicks, they could have simply granted GAIM a low or zero-cost license to the trademark. Thus "protecting" their trademark and not wasting anyone's time.

Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[thephotoman (791574)]

I've been playing around with the 2.0 tree of Gaim for a while now, and now that the legal issues are fixed, it'll be nice to finally see a stable release version of Gaim with a reasonable feature set. I don't care what it's called.

Also, AOL needs to go off and die. The previous sentence is nothing but pandering to the /. crowd.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[oyenstikker (536040)]

You do realize that if AOL goes of and dies then AIM will stop working, right?

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Darundal (891860)]

Actually, worst case scenario, one of the many protocols gaim supports ends up not working. Ever.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[TheVoice900 (467327)]

More likely the network would get absorbed and integrated in to either Google, MSN, or Yahoo....

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Eccles (932)]

He is jesting, but don't call him "Shirley."

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[NonSequor (230139)]

How do you rattle a flag?

Damn Shame

[Enderandrew (866215)]

I used to really love Gaim. But other messengers have begun to really surpass it.

Part of this apparently is due to legal problems with Gaim which no doubt discouraged the developers. Part of it is Google hiring the lead developer to jump ship and focus primarily on Google Talk.

However, it is time we had one universal standard for messages. You can have different clients with different features, however, users should have a universal address so you can message anyone from any network from any client.

Anyone recall separate independent email systems before one unified email standard?

I hope this new project begins full steam, but a big part of me is sad that between projects like Kopete, Gaim, Trillian, Miranda, etc. that we're dividing efforts instead of having one truly incredible messenger that works across all networks, supports all the features of each network (including full voice and video).

I'd gladly pay money for it. I'm sure many would. Then again, if we had a universal standard for messaging, everyone (Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo) could keep their clients, and everyone's networks would grow instantly, and we wouldn't even necessarily have to devote so much developer time to keeping networks so private, and trying to reverse engineer network standards.

Re:

[Constantine XVI (880691)]

"Anyone recall separate independent email systems before one unified email standard?"
That's what Jabber was created for.
The Gai[esc]dw[i]Pidgin/Kopete/Miranda/Trillian split is mostly because they're designed for different platforms. Pidgin is GTK+(and GNOME by extension, though I run it on Windows), Kopete is KDE, Miranda is Windows, and Trillian needs to drop off the face of the earth (kidding, it's Windows, but proprietary, not much better than Gaim, and bloated to hell :)

Re:Damn Shame

[malevolentjelly (1057140)]

I whole-heartedly disagree with you, sir. There is absolutely no reason to use a lowest-common-denominator gui for a basic and functional program like gaim. Projects like Adium have taken things like libgaim and made them usable and beautiful and integrated. Coding a multi-platform GUI should never be a limiting factor in projects- it's much more intelligent, practical, and over-all better to just create a separate GUI for each popular system. I'm all for libgaim, but I think gaim as the every-OS IM client is just poor design practice.

What would be more intelligent is just making libgaim more OS agnostic and easy to use with GUI's coded in Objective-C or C#, etc... the open source community needs to get away from multi-platform omni-messes and embrace the style guides provided for various OS's.

Re:

[TubeSteak (669689)]

Then again, if we had a universal standard for messaging, everyone (Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo) could keep their clients, and everyone's networks would grow instantly,

Advertising.

If you have a universal standard, what reason is there for anyone to use one (official, ad-supported) client over another?

AOL wants to advertise to people on AIM, ditto for MSN, Yahoo & others.
The IM client & service is not free.
It is ad supported.

Re:Damn Shame

[rekkanoryo (676146)]

Pidgin hasn't really been surpassed in its core focus--textual instant messaging. Yes, other clients are equals in many respects. Yes, some clients have integrated that fabled voice and video support that so many users seem to want. This doesn't really mean that any application is better than Pidgin or that Pidgin has fallen behind the other clients.

A unified instant messaging standard is the point of XMPP, which is more commonly known as Jabber. It is a completely open, standards-based specification using XML, which makes it flexible and extensible. Google Talk is helping XMPP gain popularity, but to an extent hiding some of the details from its users. For widespread acceptance, at some point the details have to be hidden, and Google Talk is at least doing a decent job of it.

Dividing effort is another issue entirely. Pidgin had long wished to finish its fabled Core/UI split that started way back at Gaim 0.60 (and its nine-month GTK+2-ification process between 0.59 and 0.60), and at the 2.0.0beta4 release finally accomplished this. The few revisions in Subversion that accomplished this were a complete disaster that could have been avoided had there been a bit more patience, but what's done is done. At any rate, libpurple exists now and its purpose is to make it easy to write alternative user interfaces. Enter Finch, the ncursesw-based console UI. If everyone trying to implement voice and video in other projects could come together and get a decent abstraction layer built into libpurple, any UI that wanted to could take advantage of libpurple functionality, thus reducing duplicated effort to the frontend that the user sees, which is a significant improvement over duplicating literally everything.

Next I'd like to address paying for Pidgin. In the past this was not possible for numerous reasons, including taxing and trusting individual people with the money. Now, however, when the infrastructure is in place, anyone who wants will be able to "pay" for Pidgin by donating to the project and the Instant Messaging Freedom Corporation. Just be patient a bit longer and such things will be in place so anyone who wishes to contribute money may do so.

Let me finish by coming back to my original point--Pidgin is extremely good at what it does, and has not fallen behind.

Seems reasonable...

[ancientt (569920)]

It seems reasonable that if your product is Product Sucks and you offer Product Sucks Messenger (PSM) and somebody else comes out with something that works like your product, only better and names it GNPSM (GPSM's Not PSM) then you'd have a reasonable complaint. It seems odd to me that this wasn't voluntarily changed years ago.

I personally have used both products and wouldn't use the "official" AOL client if I had any choice and in fact have never personally installed it on my computers. I've had the misfortune of using computers that had it foisted on them but sometimes its hard to convince people to switch when they already have something they "know how to use."

I'm sure the new name has wide approval and it's too late for suggestions, but I wish they'd gone with "Nonsucky Chat Client" instead.

I know it is coming so I'll head it off, yes your client is better for whatever reason you claim. Yes, I've used IRSSI, Zinc, XChat, Mozilla's whatever it was called and others. I like the client formerly known as Gaim because it was always easy to set up and easy to use and easy to explain.

Look out for Pelican

[cxreg (44671)]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T569Z8t8ZA0 [youtube.com]

A much better name!

[emblemparade (774653)]

The disgusting legal issues notwithstanding, I have to say I'm very pleased with the change! I really hate all the cryptic acronyms so popular in the free software world. "Gaim," especially, was awkward and ugly. Pronounced like "game", is it? "Pidgin" is a terrific name. It immediately implies what the software does, and rolls nicely off the tongue. I'm also *really* happy with 2beta6 -- it was exactly what I needed to let me leave Windows, where I was dependent on Trillian for far too long. Pidgin supported Unicode correctly, which I needed, and there's a handy plugin that lets me read all my eight years worth of Trillian logs. I'm a very happy Ubuntu user now. As long as I have the stage: I'm sorry that the Pidgin team had to endure AOL's despicable treatment. Big kudos to them for sticking through and listening to their lawyers. I feel like they "took the bullet" for a lot of us who use free software and believe that engineering achievements should be accessible to anyone, period. Y'all deserve a nice big hug for your service and commitment to the free software world.

Wait. wait...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya (195424)]

does this mean it'll add, "Yah" at the end of all of my IMs?

OMG

[davie (191)]

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,130,000 for pidgin [definition]

Please, for the love of God, if you're going to name a piece of software, use some made-up, bullshit name that doesn't produce over 3-fucking-million hits on google.

Re:OMG

[John Meacham (1112)]

indeed. this is why I use a FIPS-181 "random" password generator to generate names for my projects and their releases. Sometimes coding is the easy part, coming up with a name is hard. In any case, I would recommend one of the following as a consequence:

• yesoinanu
  
• gocaphy
  
• onjajimoocno
  
• wyediodnufba
  
• hugebneoko
  
• rutcacpodjo
  
• iahairnesita
  
• mishkosu
  
• sesikzay
  
• febquetmojna
  
  

So what's Pidgin IM Program gonna get shortened to

[advocate_one (662832)]

PIMP???

Better name

[Lobais (743851)]

I'd probably go for the name GINFA: Gaim Is Not Fucking AIM!

AOL's next move

[AusIV (950840)]

1) AOL objects to a program called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger"
2) The program changed the name to Gaim.
3) AOL trademarks AIM
4) AOL starts complaining about the name Gaim.
5) Gaim changes name to Pidgin.
6) AOL trademarks Pidgeon...

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[Tragek (772040)]

From wikipedia:

A pidgen, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages. Pidgins have simplified grammars and few synonyms, serving as auxiliary contact languages. They are learned as second languages rather than natively.

The emphasis is mine, with relation to the project's aims in their name selection.

I think it's a good name, if a little weird to think of after years and years of gaim.

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[Eudial (590661)]

Am I the only one who had to say the new name outloud about 3 times before I could actually say it?

Yes.

Re:

[be-fan (61476)]

A pidgin language is one that's a mixture of other languages, often used in places colonized by other nations or in places were extensive trade makes contact between speakers of two languages common.

Seriously, you didn't know that?

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Tragek (772040)]

To which I completely agree. It's about the fifth story I've read today on slashdot and other sources about intellectual property and licensing and copyright. And god, is ever saddening to see such a massive amount of resources and time and energy spent on those issues, rather than everything else that should be done.

Of course, then I have a cynical moment and think here I am writing a comment about a story about an IM client's name change, rather than rather really changing what matters in the world, like disease. It's these kind of moments when I wonder about why we do what we do.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[maxume (22995)]

You can't change the world on an empty stomach, or something like that anyway.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems (598317)]

I'm of the opinion that the original 14 year copyright term was reasonable. Anything more is overkill (well, heck, let's bump it to 15 just to be nice). Seriously... if you can't extract enough value out of an original creative work in 15 years to make it worth your while, the work's probably not that good in the first place. After that, let it go back to the public. Copyright is supposed to be a concession to the reality that not all work can be service-oriented, not a license to completely replace goods and services with ideas in gigantic sectors of our economy.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[dodongo (412749)]

But they're not talking about copyrights. They're talking about trademarks. You think any company with an enforceable brand should be forced to abandon that brand on account of arbitrary expiration dates? Twinings, the British tea company, has had an enforceable trademark on their logo for 300 years. Nobody really has legitimate grounds to suggest that's not an appropriate thing.

(FWIW, I wholeheartedly agree with you on the issue of copyright... but let's not go getting ourselves confused).

Tell it to AOL

[Erris (531066)]

saddening to see such a massive amount of resources and time and energy spent on those issues, rather than everything else that should be done.

Yes, it's sad. That's why I quit giving AOL my money.

The facts laid out by the Gaim developers were:

• GAIM had the name first
• AOL forced them to take the name GAIM because "GTK + AOL Instant Messenger" was too infringing.
• When AOL decided to trademark AIM, GAIM became too infringing
• AOL systematically and repeatedly harassed the developers until they gave up

What a bunch of assholes, but I suppose that's what runs Time Warner. "Ass on Line" sounds like a good name for them.

Lessons learned:

• Trademark your name right away.
• AOL sucks
• "IP" Law sucks, so the first lesson may also be a waste of time.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

Lessons learned:

• Trademark your name right away.
• AOL sucks
• "IP" Law sucks, so the first lesson may also be a waste of time.

BUT I WOULDNT BE ABLE TO POST ON THE INTERWEB IF IT WAZNT FOR AOL!!!1

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Knuckles (8964)]

I suppose we should have seen it coming when Lindows lost to Windows.

Except they didn't [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Enderandrew (866215)]

Very sure.

AOL gives away their services for free right now, mimicing Yahoo and Google, trying to get by on having a large network of users they can direct targeted advertisements at.

If people opt not to use AOL products and services, AOL loses money.

If the project has an obscure name, people are more likely to never hear of it, or pass it over.

GAIM sounds like an AIM replacement.

I nominate that we all say a big fuck you to AOL and forever refer to Pidgin as the Program Formerly Known as Gaim.

Re:

[oyenstikker (536040)]

Pidgin _is_ a noun.

Re:Whilst a shame...

[Exatron (124633)]

"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

Not if they called it a stenchblossom.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[644bd346996 (1012333)]

No, it's a perfect name for such a product. They obviously know how the product is used. In fact, I'm rather surprised the name wasn't already taken.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

Actually, it's a good name for AOL's IM program. Because whenever I tried to use it, I get the feeling that the computer would waddle over and take a dump on my shoes.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef (465911)]

Please let this be a Joke thats a terrible name.

Sadly, that's always the way with open source. I use The Gimp at work. Could you pick a worse name? I mean honestly do you know how hard it is to explain why you're using "The Gimp" or what "The Gimp" is? Until they see it's a graphical editor most people who haven't heard of it think I'm joking or their ears prick up wondering if they're going to have to call HR. You have Photoshop, Paintshop pro, and other well named image editors then you have "The Gimp". I mean honestly who comes up with this shit? Once you get past the name, it's a damn capable product even if it's not a total Photoshop replacement.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Profane MuthaFucka (574406)]

Are you suggesting that my new mail program called "Hey Boss I Fucked Your Wife" should be renamed? It's a perfectly good name I think.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[metamatic (202216)]

A gimp is something well-formed, or beautiful.

Yes, well, a faggot is a bundle of sticks tied together to be used as fuel, but that doesn't mean it would be a well-advised name for a package management system.

Re:Powned him?

[grcumb (781340)]

It's not Pigeon - it's 'Pidgin', which refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. The language is simple in construction and has a very limited vocabulary, but it can be quite poetic.

I speak Bislama, the Vanuatu version of the language, which contains elements of French as well as English. The syntax is very much like English (subject - verb - object), but its idiom is derived from the hundreds of local languages.

I don't know whether the team were aware of this when they chose the name, but Bislama and the other South Pacific Pidgins are spelled phonetically, which makes it really easy to understand. Example:

Mi wantem toktok long yu Means "I (me) want to talk to you."

This phonetic spelling makes it absolutely ideal for texting, because there are few if any of the crazy English spellings that stretch on forever without adding anything to the word - 'thought', for example, is simplified to 'ting'. When SMS was recently introduced into Vanuatu, even expat folks like myself found ourselves texting in Bislama, because it's more concise.

So with all that in mind, I'll simply say, "Mi ting se 'pidgin' hemi wan gudfala nem blong givim long kaen software olsem. Smol tingting blong mi nomo.'

Re:Powned him?

[damiangerous (218679)]

'Pidgin', which refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

"Pidgin" is actually an adjective describing a simplified combining of languages, not a specific language family. There are pidgin languages spoken all over the world combining many languages, not always English. Many pidgin languages are named some variation of "Pidgin" but they don't have exclusive claim to the title.

More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin [wikipedia.org]

Re:Powned him?

[Matt Perry (793115)]

Mi ting se 'pidgin' hemi wan gudfala nem blong givim long kaen software olsem. Smol tingting blong mi nomo.

What? My mother was a saint! Get out!

Re:Powned him?

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

The distinction is actually fairly straightforward: pidgins have a very limited syntax with a fixed word order. A pidgin is seldom a "first" language: it becomes a creole, not in a few generations, but in the first generation in which it is taught as a first language. There is a level of syntactic complexity that is "innate" to anyone's first language: it was the quick developments of creoles from pidgins that was the main evidence for that observation.

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[rekkanoryo (676146)]

This is not saying that the developers don't want people hacking on Pidgin. There are currently plans in place to implement a Subversion gateway so that casual hackers can pull the Pidgin source and create their patches and whatnot. The reason behind the switch to monotone is that a distributed version control system fits more in line with the core developers' workflow, working on things separate from the main line for weeks and sometimes months before pushing to the public version control in order to minimize breakage and other issues. Take for example the planned moving of libpurple to using GObjects internally. This is a project I hope to assist with, and much of the work will likely be done privately in a local monotone database, then pushed periodically into a dedicated branch and merged for Pidgin 3.0.0 when the time is right. Between pushes, however, we have the freedom to break stuff as much as we want, then go and fix it whenever we want without having to worry about breaking things for other developers and users.

As far as plugins go, good for you that you had revived a plugin. Yes, the core crowd is a bit condescending and irritable, but realize the crap that we see in #gaim--all we ask is that people read the damn documentation and the channel topic. However, if you're making an honest development effort, we will assist you if we are able. For the most part, however, Pidgin is extremely well-documented for development, and what documentation lacks, other plugin code can often be used as an example (I have done this more times than I can count in the development of my own plugins). This abundance of documentation and examples means we expect you to do a little work for yourself, which seems to be a problem for the majority of visitors to #gaim.

For the record, I will note that I am a channel regular and have been for over three years. I am not officially affiliated with the project, but I have contributed in the past. I just happen to share some of the opinions of some of the developers and more involved contributors.

Re:Thanks Guys

[Nezer (92629)]

Yeah, that will show em!

You make some interesting points but... You go off on an obscenity-filled rant that negates your stance to the extreme.

So far you've been modded up a bit but I expect this will drop down. If you had taken a few minutes and actually constructed an intelligent reply without so many expletives I would bet your comment would be modded to +5 insightful, instead it's likely to float between Insightful and Flamebait resulting in neutral karma.

If you really want to make a point, lay off the cursing. It just doesn't work unless, like Dennis Miller, you offset them with really large and obscure words and/or references that makes everything think you're reasonably intelligent instead of just being a whiny a douchebag.

You will catch more flies with honey than you will by calling them "freeloading jerkoffs" wishing they would "die in a fire and of anal rape" in addition to "ass cancer."

Seriously, who modded this crap as insightful?

I'm off to meta-moderate now.