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."

Comments

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. 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: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 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.