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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."
GAIM is great, because it keeps pushing the boundaries of IM functionality on Linux, BUT that said, I keep switching back to Kopete, mainly because it integrates with KDE. For an IM client, intergration with the desktop is paramount IMHO.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
I have been using gaim for sometime over msn/icq and I think its fantastic! It is very stable and has been a staple of my linux desktop for some time. I have also converted many of my windows based friends to the program as well. One thing that is so nice about open source software is that in many cases it is available on multiple platforms.
spend money here
Gaim is a good program, I've been using it for a while now, but last time I formatted my computer, it kept dropping the connection to MSN... despite the fact that my ports are forwarded correctly, and it was working just fine previously. So I've had to revert back to MSN Messenger 6.2, where there's no problem. Otherwise, it's a great little program.
Since the dropline win32 GTK runtime distribution is no longer maintained, are they rolling their own? They have a standalone GTK installer download, but where did it come from?
For an IM client, intergration with the desktop is paramount IMHO.
I don't see why. An IM client has fairly unsual UI requirements, so it seems unfair for it to follow the look'n'feel standards of the DE too closely. The only argument for integration with the DE is the contact list (being able to see if the guy who sent you an email is online), which isn't compelling enough IMHO.
I keep switching back to Kopete
I think Kopete is nice, but it suffers because its UI is too KDE-ish. Having to follow two levels in the context menus to do common actions just so that the structure of the context menu follows the KDE standards? Blargh.
It's actually a shame it isn't part of the OpenCD
But it is on GNUWin, which is, in my opinion, slightly better that OpenCD (which itself is very good). It's how I got started converting my Windows box to only open source programs (except Windows, of course).
Maybe, before they start adding new features, they should work more on getting the thing completely stable. If I read a couple of my friend's infos, it crashes. If I reconnect and it doesn't work, it crashes. I think that should be a higher priority than a damn webcam.
hi
Resizing is handled in the window manager. This is one of the 'problems' of the modularization of X. To repaint in the middle of a resize, the widget set would have to poll constantly for window size. That's a stupid waste of resources.
I like Trillian, a lot, but switched to Gaim as part of a moral stand in support of Open Source, and haven't regretted the switch.
1.0 is great and stable. I use ICQ / AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber, all simultaneously and it works pretty much flawlessly.
My MSN always shows me as offline and they can't send me messages, but I can send them messages. I strongly suspect this is some screwiness with the MSN protocol.
All in all I really like Gaim, and don't really miss Trillian. At the same time I switched from Office to Open Office, and haven't regretted that switch either.
Eventually I'll lose XP altogether, but I still use Dreamweaver MX 2004, which doesn't have an Open Source WYSIWYG counterpart as far as I've been able to find, so I'm stuck here for the time being (and no, crossover office / wine don't work).
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
I use GAIM's MSN messenger stuff every day to talk to the Windows users on my project, and even use it through a Squid proxy. Works fine for me.
[shrug]
This will probably be modded as a troll considering it isn't the common Slashdot opinion, but oh well.
I've used gaim off and on over the past year, (on both Linux and windows) and found that the windows port really doesn't compare at all to the Linux version, and to put it simply, on windows, it's really just a waste of resources.
For all the windows users that can't stand the bloated msn messenger or latest official aim client, I suggest at least checking out Miranda. I was introduced to it a few weeks ago by a long time gaim user (who was fed up with all the inconsistencies and problems with gaim under windows) and have been using Miranda almost exclusively since then. Albeit, it has some current issues with file transfers, but I'm sure that's only a momentary problem.
It didn't last a full 24 hours on my machine (a windows box). I installed it on a whim last night. At first I was rather pleased with it but then the error messages started appearing (both icq and msn). Also the GTK library for windows is very buggy. I had some problems with tooltips that just wouldn't disappear and the attempt at antialiasing made the GTK widgets stand out as notably blurry compared to the rest of the desktop.
So I am back using miranda-im which does a much better job in being both less intrusive and more feature rich. I've been using it for more than a year and it seems very stable. I was wrong in assuming gaim would offer similar stability.
Jilles
This functionality would be extremely nice to have. Does anybody know if there actually any plans to make this merge happen?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I just wonder why the GTK1 branch was abandoned... I'm sure there's plenty of people like myself why use all GTK1 programs, and aren't going to install another library, that uses up lots of memory, needs entirely seperate themes installed and configured, etc.
It's not as if all projects are getting rid of GTK1 in order to support GTK2. gtk-gnutella is a good enough example of that.
Also, there are lots of popular programs that are GTK1-only... GMPlayer, Sylpheed, GPA, AxYFTP... I could go on forever. Why force people to load-up multiple toolkits when maintaing GTK1 support wouldn't be terribly difficult? Surely you wouldn't decide to switch to a (dynamic) Motif-only version, and leave GTK1/2 users behind...
I'm personally sticking with 0.59.8
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Quanta claims parity with Dreamweaver.
It's part of KDE, so you'd need to switch to linux to use it -- of course, you can always use knoppix to try it out without doing anything to your computer, and see if it meets your needs.
From what I understand, the next release of Quanta is supposed to be a big leap forward, the php debugger is getting a lot of praise.
http://quanta.sourceforge.net/main2.php?snapfile=s nap04
They're also going to update their embarassingly ugly website, apparently.
I remember back in the day, probably 3 or 4 years ago, when gaim was a much smaller but up and coming project, I had a stupid issue involving my password not working.
It turned out that the developer's either forgot to include a key, or there was a little kink left in the reverse engineering procedure. In particular, some code listed all the acceptable characters for passwords, i.e., AOL's protocol accepted the _ (underscore) key, but gaim didn't.
Conclusion? My password didn't work. I was quite confused. Then something magical happened- I looked at the code, and found the list of accepted symbols. I added my key of interest (although it turned out there were others too), and tada, my first patch at the age of 19. A couples year later and I have one of my own opensource projects (http://xmms-projectm.sourceforge.net/). The point? Gaim will always be a fond memory for me because it was my first blood helping the free software world, and in some way it contributed to my desire to write my own project.
Thanks Gaim!
Carmelo
"Recursive bipartite matching"- try it!
I was the maintainer and lead developer on GAIM for over a year before Rob took over. I will NEVER lead an OSS project again, or even donate my fixes to projects I use (except anonymously), with the exception of some SE or EDA projects that the 13-year-olds will NEVER get ahold of. Why? Because 99% of you all are a bunch of whining, stupid, ignorant bitches. I don't want you contacting me and wasting my time. I couldn't STAND it. _Especially_ on a project that is designed to allow people to get in touch with you, almost all I got to hear was people bitching about this and that. OSS developers DO have a 'real life' and you incessantly bug them about a feature YOU want but are too ignorant/stupid to write yourself, or if you're not, totally ignore the code style used in the project (It makes it a horrible BITCH to integrate.) You drive off talented developers because they don't want to be the whipping boy of the completely ungrateful "OSS community".
That's why I say that Rob (and guys like Rob) are why OSS works. Somehow (for four years now, I guess ), Rob has been willing to put up with the bullshit involved with leading an OSS project. He's a rare commodity. Most of those of us talented enough to do the development can't (or simply aren't willing to) put up with the crap involved.
So take some time to thank the guys who write the software you use, send them some beer (I was living with Rob when the beer mentioned in the article arrived -- and it was MUCH appreciated), some cash, some interesting hardware, an email, or in GAIM's case, an IM, SOMETHING just to show that you are at least a little grateful for the hours and effort put in, instead of bitching about one little thing wrong with the software and talking crap about how much better it could be, when you're not willing to lift a finger yourself.
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow...