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Gaim Renamed — Now Pidgin IM
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 07, 2007 09:26 PM
from the speak-freely dept.
from the speak-freely dept.
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"
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It's funny because (Score:5, Funny)
Tomorrow's headlines (Score:5, Funny)
"AOL Instant Messenger changes name to Idgin"
Can't wait to see 2.0.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, AOL needs to go off and die. The previous sentence is nothing but pandering to the
Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0 (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0 (Score:5, Funny)
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Damn Shame (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Damn Shame (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Damn Shame (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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A much better name! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait. wait... (Score:5, Funny)
OMG (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's a Pidgin? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:What's a Pidgin? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
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Re:IP and tradmarks... again (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:IP and tradmarks... again (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Late April Fools? Please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Late April Fools? Please... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Late April Fools? Please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Late April Fools? Please... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Whilst a shame... (Score:5, Funny)
Not if they called it a stenchblossom.
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Re:Powned him? (Score:5, Informative)
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.'
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Re:Powned him? (Score:5, Informative)
"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]
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Re:Powned him? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means (Score:5, Interesting)
Watch This speech [google.com] by Richard Stallman. Warning: it's 2 hours.
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