Gaim Maintainer Rob Flynn Interviewed

gaimster writes "LinuxQuestions.org just interviewed gaim maintainer Rob Flynn. gaim version 1.0.0 was recently released and it has been the most active project on SourceForge for a while. In the interview, Rob explains what it's like to maintain such a popular project, how he got involved with gaim and what he thinks of some of the IM protocols that gaim supports. He also explains the Ebay auctions that gaim had a while back."

I use it everywhere...

[Lispy]

It's the Firefox of InstantMessenging. My friends adopt it quite easy. It's actually a shame it isn't part of the OpenCD. But I guess that's because it uses GTK (wich is great for a Gnome addict such as me.) ;-)

gaim is great, and I especially like Adium

[Trepidity]

When I use OS X, I really like Adium [adiumx.org]. It uses libgaim for its messaging, but has its own native-OSX GUI. I think the GTK gaim could learn a few things that are particularly nice about Adium too---I like how it highlights your buddy's names in the buddy list with color codes depending on current messaging status: green if they're currently typing, blue if they've typed something into a window you haven't checked since then, etc.

Re:If he's 24 how did he install slackware at age

[torstenvl]

He's 24 in late September of '04 which means he was 12 in late September of '92. Which means he could have remained 12 until September of '93. That's two thirds of the year in question. So what was your beef with his claim again?

Another true believer

[saur2004]

Ever since they solved a nasty little persistent crash problem that was happening in Windows, Ive become a real fan of GAIM.

One suggestion I would make though.

On IRCs make the default character coding ISO-8859-1

I was on a server that had a channel name spelled with a "tilde e" which was consistently causing problems for UTF-8

Separate upgrades for protocol plugins?

[Anonymous Coward]

GAIM is one of my favorite open source projects, and a wonderful app in itself. However, one thing annoys me: the fact that I have to upgrade the whole thing for every minor protocol change.

As in, when Yahoo! or MSN makes a switch to its protocols, I can't just download a file and fix it - I have to get a whole new package, or recompile, and so forth. This is particularly frustrating as newer GAIM releases (naturally) use newer GTK libraries and then all the libraries that depends on. Turns it into a Microsoft-esque upgrade cycle!

It'd be nice if I could just install GAIM 1.0, and then keep it like that for a few years, upgrading the protocol plugins whenever necessary. It'd save a lot of time, and mean I don't need to keep upgrading Glib, GTK, and a million other things (that tend to get heavier with each release) just to keep on chatting.

Perhaps I'm missing something - any thoughts on this? Either way, good work GAIM crew!

MSN webcam support

[Deliveranc3]

Apparently no one can get this damn thing working.

This is really a shame, there are tonnes of features that are kind of useful but webcaming will onyl be useful if it's popularly adopted.

Kinda like IM...

Re:Why Sean is such an Asshat to Gentoo Devs/Users

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

Upstream wanting distros to mark their versions so that they don't have to support anything but the latest version downloaded directly from them, or compiled from their sources are beginning to get more and more common. This imho is a good thing, distros should handle their own problems and the maintainers of that distro would then communicate with upstream to reduce the signal to noice ratio. Gentoo users may feel that they are somehow exempt as they compile from source but I have no reason to belive Sean is complaining unless he has valid reasons, I simply fail to see the problem. For a real asshat check what happend to debian with the mirc package when the package maintainer refused to do a similar thing (the package maintainer was wrong but the reaction was far worse). lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/02/msg00771.htm l (there are other threads discussing this but this was the one i found first)

Re:Why abandon GTK1?

[dmaxwell]

GTK1 is an unmaintained deprecated toolkit. It has been for almost three years. At this point you have to wonder why projects are still using it. It isn't as though it was a big surprise and they had no time to switch over.

Without resorting to a hack, you can't have antialiased GTK1 fonts and GTK2 fonts on the same system. The toolkit itself just seems more code rotted the longer it persists. Those apps still on GTK1 really should have started porting their codebases to GTK2 years ago.

Re:gaim, ehhhh

[Minna Kirai]

Am I the only one here who has NEVER had a successful AIM file transfer when using Gaim?

Hate to talk like an AOLer, but "me too!". The frustrating part is that this is clearly a widespread problem, but it never gets documented on the gaim FAQ or changelog.

(I haven't used gaim in a while, so I just installed the latest to check that it was still broken before replying. I discovered that they've managed to sink the Open File dialog box to previously unimaginable lows- worse than any other GTK program I've seen so far)

libGAIM (or should be libIM)

[mikefe]

Yes, there is Miranda IM. I have yet to try it out yet though. The major reason why is exactly because of the lack of cross platform support in Miranda-IM[1].

I mostly use AIM and IRC (with plans to use MSN and Jabber in the future) and I haven't had much trouble with gaim on windows. There are a couple things like the main window not popping up when someone logs in (and I have yet to report that bug -- DOH!). Oh, and just watch the page fault count keep growing as usage continues (which seems to be prevalent in windows programs in general -- the page fault counter on windows can be a better indicator of activity than the CPU time counter, with some exceptions of course).

Now, I don't know if there is anyone working on merging Miranda-IM and Gaim, but Gaim is working on libgaim. Here's a quote from the article:

"RF) I'd like to see the Core/UI separate move further so that other interfaces can be slapped on to the core."

At the very least the protocols will be in libgaim (which is what is the "core" that is being seperated out of the "UI"). This way, Miranda, Kopete, and Gaim can all compile against the same library (which really should be called libIM), and all move forward faster instead of duplication where there should be none[2].

[1]The idea is to slowly transition and train my users to this cross platform software (FF, TB, OOo, Gimp, Gaim, etc) and move to a hybrid of windows desktops and "Linux Desktops" over VNC, and then look into Windows terminal services with Linux on the Desktops. Anyway, that's the long term plan. Moving in that direction is slow and step by step -- as it should be with any transition.

[2] They all have different front ends/UI and that's where they should be competing/trying to differentiate themselfs.

Re:Why Sean is such an Asshat to Gentoo Devs/Users

[darkmeridian]

There is a reason Gaim devs hate Gentoo users. The users mess with all the settings instead of compiling the source "straight". They put all these compile flags and stuff trying to optimize the hell out of an instant messenging client. Then they bitch and complain to the devs about how the software sucks.

This is just to illustrate both sides. I used to use Gentoo and I was annoyed by my fellow users.

Re:Gaim rules

[Curtman]

What is with the "troll" thing around here?

A Troll [catb.org] is related to the 'flaimbait' moderation. It's like saying "I was wrong in assuming gaim would offer similar stability" in a thread celebrating the achievements of Gaim. It serves no purpose other than to attract a whole bunch of people telling you to go screw yourself.

I don't want to lose any more karma then I have left

That's a mistake. Karma is just a silly thing that it says on your user page [slashdot.org]. Nobody sees it but you, and it really means nothing. Anybody who has posted many comments has "Karma: Excellent" there unless all they do is post nonsense. Speak your mind, screw the groupthink.

Re:I love GAIM but ...

[Tolleman]

And in my humble opinion, basicly all of them are ugly.