Gaim is now Pidgin IM

madmatt

Awesome is as awesome does.
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Many years ago when this project was first started, it was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." AOL naturally complained, and Mark Spencer changed the name to "Gaim." AOL was appeased, and no one really ever heard of it because there were very few users back then.

A few years later AOL trademarked "AIM," and started referring to their IM services using that name. They complained. The issue was brought up on Slashdot, and the Gaim developers at the time got some legal support. That legal support advised that the ongoing discussions with AOL be kept confidential until fully settled, and so it remained. The public thought the issue had gone away then. It sorta did, in that AOL stopped responding to Gaim's legal support for a while.

Our legal support has changed several times, and each group of lawyers have recommended silence & secrecy. Around the time of Gaim's first 2.0.0 beta, AOL came back into our lives in a very strong way, this time threatening to sue Sean.

This represents a clear pattern. AOL received more pushback than they expected, and would sort of let things stand for a while. Then they would threaten a different Gaim developer. Each time a new Gaim developer was threatened, we had to look at new legal support, to prevent a conflict of interest.

This process could not go on forever. As a result we ended up forming the Instant Messaging Freedom Corporation, and making it legally responsible for Gaim. We also had our new legal support work to create a real settlement with AOL that would get this issue dismissed from our lives forever.

Getting a settlement with AOL has taken FAR FAR longer than we would have ever guessed. On legal advice, we have refrained from any non-beta release during this process as a show of good faith, and to keep AOL from giving up on it. Again, on legal advice, we have also kept this information closely controlled.

At long last, I am pleased to announce that we have a signed settlement and can release our new version. There is one catch however: we have had to change the project's name.

After a long, and unfortunately secret debate (as we could not say why we were looking at a name change, we ended up just doing this ourselves), we settled on the name "Pidgin" for gaim itself, "libpurple" for libgaim (which, as of 2.0.0 beta6, exists), and "Finch" for gaim-text. Yes, the spelling of "Pidgin" is intentional, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin.

Since so much is changing between the name and the nature of the 2.0.0 release itself, we decided to go ahead with something we have talked about doing for a while now. We have set up our own server, kindly donated by DVLabs. As a result our new home will be www.pidgin.im and developer.pidgin.im We, at least for now, will still be using SF's mirroring system for releases. However, the bug tracking will no longer be on SF, and we will be migrating the mailing lists at some point soon. Also, we have chosen to go with monotone for our revision control, rather than the SF cvs or svn.

In the last week or so, an upgrade to SF's infrastructure caused an old version of the gaim-cabal list to become briefly public. It has always been our intention to end-of-life this list and make its archives public once the settlement was signed. Fortunately, the legal process has concluded, allowing us to make a formal announcement now, instead of months from now.

I, and all of pidgin's development team have deeply hated the need to keep some portion of our work, decision making and discussion secret for a time. I sincerely apologize that as a result of this need, you all have had no chance to help us with it, and to provide feedback.

Now that the settlement is signed, we hope to have the final Pidgin 2.0.0 release late this week or early next.

We are going to release it with a 2.0.0 version number, and an API compatibility layer for plugin authors. The project has not changed; this is our 2.0.0 release, not some new program that requires new version numbering.

More Information: Pidgin IM
Download: Pidgin IM 2.0.0 Beta 6 (Still called Gaim)
Source: Gaim

This was already posted on the front page but I wanted to provide our community with the full article.
 
Read the last line of my post Venom *wink*
 
You are making fun of Venom's incomparable grasp of the obvious, no? :)
 
that and his ability to dup news posts :) LOL :p
 
People are already saying 'Pidgin' is a stupid name, without even looking up it's meaning, however, I do agree that something simpler such as 'Gim', and 'libIm' would of been easier to recognise.

Still though, it's the product that matters, and that's still awesome :)
 
I just compiled this from source in Linux. Looks pretty nice so far; I might start using it in Windows again when the new version is released. :)

pidgin.png
 
Kunal, I'm a bit confused. Is that on your Vista box? You applied a theme to Pidgin to make it match the Vista look?
 
he's running it on linux, i just asked him which theme he was using with beryl (a window manager).

thx netryder, can't think how i missed that one, it's there by default
 
Ahh, thanks for the clarification vertigo.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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