Gaim Renamed — Now Pidgin IM

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"

Comments

IP and tradmarks... again

[nurb432]

Blah.

This is getting really old.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Tragek]

To which I completely agree. It's about the fifth story I've read today on slashdot and other sources about intellectual property and licensing and copyright. And god, is ever saddening to see such a massive amount of resources and time and energy spent on those issues, rather than everything else that should be done.

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.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[maxume]

You can't change the world on an empty stomach, or something like that anyway.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[caffeinemessiah]

PIDGIN is *NOT* a geeky reference to the RFC about carrier pidgeons. "PIDGIN" is a local dialect of English used in Hawaii Wiki. I know because I just got back from a conference there. Hang loose, brah....

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Tragek]

Oh, I know that, intimately. I'm not advocating we abandon Copyright,IP or anything. I just wish that less time would be spent on it, and more time on the development that leads to that IP and copyright.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[ResidntGeek]

Don't link Wikipedia pages without reading them first, dumbass. And, given the comment you've just posted, I'd advise you to be veeeeeeery careful whenever assuming you know something.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[jreddell]

Yeah... you should probably lay off of the caffeine, so you don't get owned like that. Pidgin is a combination of languages that gradually develops over time to facilitate communication between peoples that speak different languages (i.e. Creole, Taglish, etc.). You shouldn't pretend like you know what you're talking about because of a vacation you just took, it makes you look like a fool.
I do have to give you props there though for linking that wikipedia article. That gave me a good laugh, thanks.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Morons 1 - Dumbasses 0

Yay!

(pwned)

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[thc69]

Pidgin is not a specific dialect such as the one you cite. The wiki that you link even says that it is a somewhat generic term.

You spelled "pigeon" wrong.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[timmarhy]

why not? i seriously have not seen a single argument for keeping IP and copyright laws that i can't shoot down. why should anyone have the exclusive right to an idea? you can't possibly prove you where the first person to THINK of something, there's every chance someone else had the exact same idea. as for copyright, yes i agree you should retain ownership of your work, and no one else should be able to claim it as their own. but copyright law as it stands now? it's nothing to do with protecting peoples ownership of work, or peoples rights for that matter.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems]

I'm of the opinion that the original 14 year copyright term was reasonable. Anything more is overkill (well, heck, let's bump it to 15 just to be nice). Seriously... if you can't extract enough value out of an original creative work in 15 years to make it worth your while, the work's probably not that good in the first place. After that, let it go back to the public. Copyright is supposed to be a concession to the reality that not all work can be service-oriented, not a license to completely replace goods and services with ideas in gigantic sectors of our economy.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[dodongo]

But they're not talking about copyrights. They're talking about trademarks. You think any company with an enforceable brand should be forced to abandon that brand on account of arbitrary expiration dates? Twinings, the British tea company, has had an enforceable trademark on their logo for 300 years. Nobody really has legitimate grounds to suggest that's not an appropriate thing.

(FWIW, I wholeheartedly agree with you on the issue of copyright... but let's not go getting ourselves confused).

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[HeroreV]

What I'm really tired of is all the bad names in the FOSS world. "Pidgin" sounds terrible.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[dodongo]

"enforceable trademark on their logo for 300 years"

Apologies. I should say their logo dates back 300 years -- they do still have a trademark on it, although I do not know when the trademark was acquired by them. Suffice it to say that having a trademark on such things in perpetuity (at least as long as you have the wherewithal to fight for it in court) seems not too far off base. At least within reason, and yes, I think you're fine to doubt the enforceability of a AIM trademark on another similar product whose name happens to involve the a-i-m string. Though the Lindows-Windows fiasco seems to back up the idea that rhyming with a trademark may be a bad deal.

Anyway, it's a trademark, not a copyright.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Tragek]

True, but the spirit of my original point holds: It's an annoying thing to see so much time, energy, resources etc. wasted in the name of trademark law.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[dodongo]

Agreed, and sadly, that seems to be the nature of the beast.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Matt Perry]

To which I completely agree. It's about the fifth story I've read today on slashdot and other sources about intellectual property and licensing and copyright.

It would be nice if Slashdot created a legal section like they did for politics and games. That way it will be easier for people to filter out/in.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems]

Trademarks probably should be allowed to remain. I'm a little confused about this, though... I was under the distinct impression that trademarks took effect as soon as you began to market something with a unique name, not requiring some official registration. And if that's not how it is, it should be. It seems like in this case Gaim should have been the ones to keep the name, but they didn't have the legal/monetary resources or desire to fight it through. Which is a whole other kind of bullshit altogether.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[alphamugwump]

More like: "Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[aamcf]

. if you can't extract enough value out of an original creative work in 15 years to make it worth your while, the work's probably not that good in the first place.

There are some musical recordings that are very expensive to make and take much longer that 14 years to recover costs on, let alone make a profit on. IIRC, a lot of classical orchestral recordings are like this.

And, speaking only for myself, having copyright on my work is not about making money, but about retaining some degree of control over what I write.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[professionalfurryele]

"There are some musical recordings that are very expensive to make and take much longer that 14 years to recover costs on, let alone make a profit on. IIRC, a lot of classical orchestral recordings are like this."

True, an in part this is because they are made inefficiently, in part this is because few people want them. That is called the free market. If you want to make exceptions for this kind of work, you do it via public grants or patronage. Not via copyright, because copyright should be to encourage creation of as much work as possible.

As for:

"And, speaking only for myself, having copyright on my work is not about making money, but about retaining some degree of control over what I write."

You go right on ahead and don't publish it then. No one can change your work if you don't publish it. Keep it to yourself and blam, you have total control.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[aamcf]

Not via copyright, because copyright should be to encourage creation of as much work as possible.

What? Without copyright, it would be much more difficult to create these expensive low-return creative works

No one can change your work if you don't publish it.

True, but again if I didn't publish there would be little benefit in creating. Once again copyright encourages creation.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[SillyNickName4me]

What? Without copyright, it would be much more difficult to create these expensive low-return creative works

Such works were already created before modern copyright existed. They were created with a 14 years copyright term as well, so there is very strong historical evidence saying that you do not need modern virtually infinite copyright for such works at all.

if copyright as we have it now would have existed in the 1700s and 1800s, there would be a lot of music that would have been way too expensive to perform for many orchestras however, which would ave reduced interest in such music and would have made far less funds available, resulting in less such works being created.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[aamcf]

Such works were already created before modern copyright existed.

They created high quality recordings of world-class orchestras before modern copyright existed? I didn't realise it was such a new idea. Seriously.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[SillyNickName4me]

They created high quality recordings of world-class orchestras before modern copyright existed? I didn't realise it was such a new idea. Seriously.

No, but they did write and perform them way before recording was even possible.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[teh kurisu]

i seriously have not seen a single argument for keeping IP and copyright laws that i can't shoot down.

Well there's the fact that it would be very difficult to commercialise most works that are currently protected by copyright. For instance, I have a favourite author. I have nine of his books. How many of those books wouldn't have been written if he wasn't making money off them, and time spent writing them was cut into by a 9 to 5 job? Music and film making also require equipment, which is usually expensive.

Relaxation of copyright has worked for open source software, because businesses have been able to fall back on the fact that other businesses are a large part of their target market, and they've been able to sell technical support. Music, writing and film are targeted at consumers, and are impossible to sell support for. Bands can tour, but this is usually very expensive and even indie bands tend to sell their albums in order to pay for their tour.

My biggest worry about the removal of copyright is that companies producing IP will resort to more draconian measures in order to protect their content. Sort of like how everybody would hire private security if the police were disbanded. I can see this meaning more DRM, where they are selling an encryption key to let you play their content rather than a licence to play it. Given the choice between DRM and BPI/RIAA lawsuits, I'd choose the lawsuits.

Oh, and let's not forget that the significant factor behind the argument for abolishing copyright is the desire to get something for nothing. People don't want to pay for their music any more, and they want to feel that their behaviour is justified. Unfortunately they're clutching at straws when they trot out the 'cultural value' argument.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[dknj]

All you had to do was google trademark and you'd find USPTO which explains how trademarks work. Corporations need trademarks, otherwise I could register a company say i'm releasing gmail before gmail is released and, uh oh, now i'm the trademark holder for gmail. Life doesn't work that way. I for one am quite pleased with the trademark process (this coming from somone having his own company and trademarked name).

Gaim has no right to keep the name if they don't want to fight it. So goes life. Maybe I'm biased because I retain a high profile lawyer and fights like this would not last more than two certified letters.. but if they really thought they weren't breaking AOL's trademark, they could easily find lawyers willing to fight for them. But, I know the gaim team and they are quick to run away with their tails tucked between their legs

remember when AOL threatened about the smiley faces? "upper management" forced the smiley removal from cvs and iirc from a few releases (it was later readded when other projects defied AOL and included smiley faces in their aim-compatible products). that was about that time when i quit the gaim team. adium x seems to be better managed, alas they're strictly OS X :(

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Millenniumman]

Why should we have one copyright expiration limit for everything? Patents aren't like that.

Personally, I think books should be copyrighted longer than songs should be copyrighted longer (or the same as) movies should be copyrighted longer than software.

As for this comment:

if you can't extract enough value out of an original creative work in 15 years to make it worth your while, the work's probably not that good in the first place That assumption is completely untrue. In fact, it's utter nonsense.

You'd be right in some circumstances (software) if you said "if you can't make it worth your while in 15 years, you won't ever", but you would still be wrong in many.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems]

There are some musical recordings that are very expensive to make and take much longer that 14 years to recover costs on, let alone make a profit on.

I would like to see the recording company that's willing to invest in a project that they know will not come out of the red for over 15 years. That just seems completely couter-intuitive to the way the music industry operates in general.

As for "some degree of control"... that's all well and good, but who says you SHOULD have control over a set of words? The current "IP climate" has given everyone this warped view of ideas as something that can be owned. That they can be owned at all is a construct of government designed to promote research and creative works, and that they can be owned essentially forever is a distortion of the legal system by Disney and MGM. There's no good reason, aside from that, that anybody should be able to say, "this idea is mine, you aren't allowed to use it unless I say so".

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems]

I'm curious as to what things you think wouldn't be created today if we went back to a 15 year copyright period? Movies make 90% of their income in theaters and the first couple months of DVD sales. Software obviously has a shorter shelf life than 15 years. Video games drop in price quite drastically after 6 months or so, and can't be making a lot more profit. Music, aside from the odd exception like the Beatles or Dark Side of The Moon is out of steam within 5-10 years. Books may be the slowest to move, but they're also quite cheap to create compared to other forms of media. And if there's a book falls out of copyright after 15 years without making a profit, I don't see a 3rd party company going to the trouble of doing a printing just so they too can continue to be unprofitable, so there's little chance of competition in that case.

Now, I'm not saying that some things don't continue to generate income past 15 years. Music generates royalties on nostalgia radio stations, movies and tv shows through syndication, etc. But as long as the original creator has a fair chance to extract compensation, I see no reason why we shouldn't start trying to expand the public domain again.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems]

It does sound like Gaim just doesn't want to fight this. The link you provided confirms that trademark is established at "time of use", not just by registration. They would have had legal grounds to keep this, and maybe even to claim trademark infringement against AIM if they wanted.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Tragek]

Please don't tell me it's the spellings that bother you. Beyond that, let's try to read beyond the errors, and into what was actually said.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Overly Critical Guy]

IP and trademarks are important. The GPL, for instance, relies on the concept of IP.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Esteanil]

Something like 95% of the income of copyrighted works happen in the first two years, as far as I can remember. (A quick google search doesn't give me a good source for this, I'd be very grateful if someone could reply with a source).

Anyhow. Copyright is supposed to be for the benefit of society, and honestly, when the creator has gotten 95% of the income the work will generate, wouldn't it be good it society could benefit?

Copyright lasted for a long time in the beginning, probably mainly due to the fact that it took a long while to propagate the materials to the intended audience. Today we have the internet. If it's good, it's available.

Copyright should be 2 years. And fair use should be expanded.

The copyright battle is as much a generational battle as it is anything else, the "old" are sitting on massive amounts of copyrights, most of them corporations. They bought out the copyrights very cheaply from the actual creator at an early stage.
So of course the elected officials are getting in line, most of them are "old" too, and the copyright holders are paying their pensions.
The young people of today are the ones infringing.

Boicotts generally don't work, since too few people join them. But we do have one weapon. Piracy.

It's time we made up our minds that sharing is civil disobedience.
We're fighting copyright holders with a goal to have copyright reduced to two years and fair use expanded. Piracy is a weapon the copyright holders actually fear.

Don't be a leecher, you're not fighting the good fight. Share.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[delire]

There are two good reasons to have silly names:

1/ They are more memorable if they cause some pain at first.

2/ They are less likely to breach someone else's trademark.

Do you really think 'Flickr', 'Adobe' and 'Google' are any better? Consider that you might have simply become used to these stupid names. 'Flickr' is so unintuitive to type people actually had to think about the name a lot at first.

I distinctly remember people laughing at "Google" when they started to make headlines quipping "With a name like that they better have a good PR department." People mistyped it continuously "google", "giggle", "googgle" etc. As it arose the name itself did half the PR work for them: being an invented word gave them the liberty of people using it in ways guarded english words wouldn't be used, hence the emergence of the verb "to google". Furthermore, people had become intimate with the brand by learning a new word.

Thankfully the GAIM folk didn't call it "Pigeon" or something sensible like that. Worth mentioning that 'pidgin' is an actual word, perhaps aptly describing the kind of English language heavy IM users come to speak over time..

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skreems]

2 years seems a bit extreme to me, though. Not only are you gonna have a tough sell with people who like IP on principle, but there are plenty of products that would actually be harmed by that. Copyright is from the date of creation, right? Well, there are lots of really good films that are made a year or two before they're shown in theaters, let alone released to DVD. Hell, with some independent films, they're shown at festivals years before they get a general release. Any copyright term that ends before they have a reasonable chance to distribute seems excessive. Something closer to 5 years sounds like a more reasonable minimum.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[HeroreV]

It's good to have unusual names, but "Pidgin" sounds awful, at least the way I would pronounce it. Names can be unique and sound pretty, too.

Names for FOSS software are often chosen by a small number people without public input. I think we'd have nicer names if the naming process was more open.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Esteanil]

I'm actually not sure, I thought it was from time of release but you may be right.
If you are, let's make it 2yrs from release.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[HermMunster]

New name please. Pigdin sounds fat and lazy and makes one feel like it is a pig wallowing in its own shit. Sorry, but that's what the word evokes in me. They need to come up with something better. Can't imagine then coming up with such a name.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[CogDissident]

I would like to point out that most medical research companies live in the idea that their products will be sell-able for a significant period longer than 2 years. 2 years seems to be an extremely short period of time to expect people to recoup losses, even windows only comes out with an OS every 3-4 years.

Re:IP and tradmarks... again

[Skye16]

Unfortunately for you, when balanced against the public good (mass quantities of work being introduced into the public domain), we... don't really care. The whole point to copyright was to promote a feed-loop, where many thousands of people could stand on the shoulders of one person, and take the field even farther.

I don't really care about your personal wants in this regard. If you decide not to develop your copyrighted works because you want to have sole control over them for the duration of your life, then that is all of our loss. But I would hazard a guess to say that you are, by far, in the minority, and the relative gains to be made with a shorter term would by far outweigh whatever contributions you or your ilk may provide.

I realize that came off as rude and condescending, but that was not my primary intent. I surely didn't go out of my way to sugar coat things, but I'll add some caveats now: I find it unfortunate that you feel you are the sole arbiter of what can or should go into your work. On the one hand, I see a certain pride in your work, and a desire to keep it out of the hands of riff-raff like myself (and I mean that sincerely, because whether it is the written word or music, I would not do any work justice), but I also see an arrogance in you that says "I alone am capable of doing right by my works". Only in exceptionally rare cases can this be said, and only them for a finite period of time. Eventually, somebody will be capable of undertaking this task and possibly completing or adding to it more admirably than you (or anyone before you) ever could. And so it goes, onward through history.

As for those works that take longer and more expense to produce; that's just unfortunate. But, after all, it may take me more than 20 years to recoup the costs on a particular R&D project, which renders a patent nearly useless. But just owning the rights to a work or process does not give me the right to print money, even if it's just to "recoup the cost". After all, only a fool would advocate lengthening the terms of copyright so that this particular post of mine recouped the costs of development (and since I value my free time, I'll put the price at 10$). Even with a copyright term exceeding 1000 years, I could hardly hope to make a single penny off this post over that entire length. That's unfortunate for me, but so be it. Life is not always fair.

It's funny because

[Anonymous Coward]

IM-speak is a lot like a pidgin language.

Re:It's funny because

[HTH NE1]

I believe in the Isle of Man (.im) they speak English(Brit.) and Manx.

Re:It's funny because

[Sublmnl]

oU-Y wHAT-SAY?

Powned him?

[CrazyJim1]

Pidgeoned him!

Re:Powned him?

[grcumb]

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.'

Re:Powned him?

[dhasenan]

'Pidgin' refers to a language arising from contact between several languages rather than branching nicely off a single language. Usually after a few generations they start calling it a creole, though the distinction is rather nebulous.

Re:Powned him?

[damiangerous]

'Pidgin', which refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

"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

Re:Powned him?

[Matt Perry]

Mi ting se 'pidgin' hemi wan gudfala nem blong givim long kaen software olsem. Smol tingting blong mi nomo.

What? My mother was a saint! Get out!

Re:Powned him?

[Lemmy Caution]

You're both right. "Linguistically," you are correct - a pidgin is a hybrid dialect. However, specific pidgins are called "Pidgin," (or "Pijin" or such.) They aren't variations of a master pidgin, either - that is what the dialect is called, and oddly enough, insofar as they have a rich, complete syntax, they are no longer pidgin languages, but "creoles" called "Pidgin."

Don't over-rely on wiki.

Re:Powned him?

[Lemmy Caution]

The distinction is actually fairly straightforward: pidgins have a very limited syntax with a fixed word order. A pidgin is seldom a "first" language: it becomes a creole, not in a few generations, but in the first generation in which it is taught as a first language. There is a level of syntactic complexity that is "innate" to anyone's first language: it was the quick developments of creoles from pidgins that was the main evidence for that observation.

Re:Powned him?

[damiangerous]

You're both right.

No, I'm right. You simply reiterated what I said in that "Many pidgin languages are named some variation of "Pidgin" but they don't have exclusive claim to the title." I'm aware that there are pidgins named some variation of "Pidgin" and went out of my way to state that. The post I replied to claimed that his language was the pidgin, which is simply untrue.

Re:Powned him?

[damiangerous]

"Um, now you're wrong." Er, yes. Repeated use had me confusing words. His language (Bislama) is most probably a creole, as it now has a dictionary and can be considered stable. However I was correcting his claim that "[Pidgin] refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific." When he later added "I speak Bislama, the Vanuatu version of the language" (empahsis mine) this very strongly implies an exclusionary statement, that only that language and its dialects are "Pidgin" and that he was unaware of any other pidgin or creole languages. This is what I was correcting.

Re:Powned him?

[amerinese]

That's really cool.

Pidgin can also refer to another pidgin in Hawaii, that was a result of mixing Japanese, Chinese languages, Hawaiian (sorry I can't remember what it's really called), and English.

One of the Asian American studies professors at Columbia speaks it. He's like nth generation Japanese American and grew up in Hawaii.

Re:Powned him?

[wizzahd]

+1 Futurama reference!

Re:Powned him?

[stuartrobinson]

The term 'pidgin' doesn't just refer to the Pacific pidgin languages (e.g., Bislama and Tok Pisin), but also to those spoken elsewhere (e.g., in the Caribbean). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

Re:Powned him?

[stuartrobinson]

In theory, the distinction is clear-cut ("a pidgin becomes a creole when it is acquired as a native language"), but in reality things are much more murky. What makes it tricky is determining what exactly it means for a something to be a native language. In multilingual situations, where children are being raised exposed to multiple languages simultaneously, it's hard to say. There is extensive discussion of this in the literature on pidgin and creole languages, which is actually quite large. In fact, there's an entire journal dedicated to the topic, The Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. So I don't think it's really that straightforward in the final analysis.

Re:Powned him?

[maxume]

He's posting to advertise his site. He posts short, inane, marginally on topic comments to many stories with the hope that a few people click through(he no doubt has noticed that posting early very much increases the chance of getting modded up). It must be working, he isn't stopping.

Re:Powned him?

[TheoMurpse]

Many pidgin languages are named some variation of "Pidgin" but they don't have exclusive claim to the title.

For example, Tok Pisin was formerly a pidgin (now it is a creole) which is the combination of "talk" and "pidgin" in Papua New Guinea.

Don't even get me started on how stupid the idea of calling an IM client which is the combination of AIM, ICQ, MSN, &c is. From Wikipedia:

Pidgins have rudimentary grammars and restricted vocabulary

. Compare that with

A creole language, or simply a creole, is stable language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many features that are not inherited from either parent.

Calling it "Pidgin" implies that it is unstable, underdeveloped, serves only the most basic of needs, and that no one uses it comfortably (a pidgin is never a native language). I understand the motivation, but I think it should have been called Creole instead, because Creole is the natural evolution of a Pidgin. It is fleshed out, spoken as a native language, and can be used in any situation.

As a user of gaim and a linguaphile, I just don't like it.

Re:Powned him?

[Pigdog Monkeybutt]

Mi wantem toktok long yu Jar Jar, is that you?

Re:Powned him?

[TheDugong]

Pidgin is the name of "the language" and also a term referring to (some?) creole type languages in general.

In PNG pidgin is called "Tok Pisin" or normally just "pisin". In English "Pidgin".

In PNG you would say "Yu save tok pisin?", (with tok being more or less optional) meaning, in English, "Do you understand pidgin?"

Bislama and Tok Pisin are at least as similar as English and American English.

Re:Powned him?

[grcumb]

He's posting to advertise his site. He posts short, inane, marginally on topic comments to many stories with the hope that a few people click through(he no doubt has noticed that posting early very much increases the chance of getting modded up). It must be working, he isn't stopping.

Here's a short, inane response: I've removed the website link. (Incidentally, it only features a bunch of outdated, inane essays.) The site, by the way, has no advertising on it, and makes me no money whatsoever. In response to the timing: if you'd care to check a map, Vanuatu (which is where I live, and what my last post is about) is located in GMT -11, which means I post in the day time.

I hope that's enough for you to realise that you're spouting silly conspiracy theories about someone who may well be inane, but does it because it's who I am, and not for any ulterior motives.

HTH HAND

Re:Powned him?

[maxume]

Allow me to apologize. I meant to be talking about the parent post to your comment but did not make it clear enough.

Re:Powned him?

[lazarusdishwasher]

It almost sounds like we could use both to differentiate between beta and release

Calling it "Pidgin" implies that it is unstable, underdeveloped, serves only the most basic of needs, and that no one uses it comfortably

pidgin sounds like beta or maybe alpha

About Time

[stoolpigeon]

I for one welcome our new pigeon overlords.

Re:About Time

[kestasjk]

The pigeon/pidgin mistake is one that is going to be made repeatedly from now on.

Tomorrow's headlines

[Eudial]

Tomorrow's headlines:

"AOL Instant Messenger changes name to Idgin"

Re:Tomorrow's headlines

[jesboat]

Yeah...

but, speaking of what AOL could do, what exactly did they do to make this a "settlement"? It sounds like it was basically, AOL saying: "Okay, let's make a deal here. You can give us exactly what we'll want and we'll go away. Good deal?"

Seriously, what did the IMFC (IIRC) get from this?

Re:Tomorrow's headlines

[hritcu]

Good question. It appears that the dispute was about the AIM trademark, and Gaim has to change its name now. What exactly stopped them from changing their name right away? What did they gain out of the settlement?

And WTF is IMFC ?

Re:Tomorrow's headlines

[MadJo]

Let's aim for that.

Uh oh!

[Funkcikle]

Ixnay on the amenay angechay!

For those wondering what Pidgin means

[pembo13]

Wikipedia knows

Once again, useful time and resources wasted on IP issues.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "Intellectual Property". It is propaganda. There are copyrights, patents, and trademarks. They are very different from each other. Anyone using the term "Intellectual Property" to group the three of them is either confused or is trying to mislead others.

Watch This speech by Richard Stallman. Warning: it's 2 hours.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[STrinity]

Please, people, is it necessary to mod up people who post links to wikipedia?

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[heinousjay]

I'm sorry, did you just suggest people watch two hours of Richard Stallman on a Saturday night? Dear god, I know this is Slashdot but let's not go too far.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[iminplaya]

Anyone using the term "Intellectual Property" to group the three of them is either confused or is trying to mislead others.

Not at all. It's no different than grouping Christianity, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. under the banner of "religion". Funny how the concept of religion has striking similarities to that of IP. Both depend on faith in something that doesn't necessarily exist. Well, in one case it definitely doesn't exist.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[Dun Malg]

Please, people, is it necessary to mod up people who post links to wikipedia? Well, yeah. How else would I keep all my troll accounts' karma up?

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[MoxFulder]

Second time I've seen the same sentiment "useful time and resource wasted on IP issues." And I wonder, why the fuck don't all these open source dudes make a point of not trying to walk around in the exact same footsteps as the ground breakers?

How hard would it have been to not call the project Gee - AIM(tm)?

Actually, you have the chronology backwards! Originally the official "AIM" was called "AOL Instant Messenger". And GAIM was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger" in its infancy.

AOL complained, so GAIM changed its name to... "GAIM". This is the crucial point: GAIM was officially called GAIM before AIM was officially called AIM. Surprising but true. But AOL then trademarked the name AIM and has aggressively/ass-hattedly defended that trademark. Trademark law is weird... unlike patents, coming up with it first doesn't matter. And once you have a trademark, you must aggressively defend it in order to keep it.

AOL may have been total dicks in this case, but its not clear that the law gives them a lot of wiggle room in this case. GAIM is a very prominent competing product with a similar name, and so it's quite likely that they could've lost their trademark right without taking this action.

In any case, despite the name change, rest assured that Pidgin will continue to be awesome, and the official AIM client will continue to be a big piece of crap.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[MoxFulder]

Not at all. It's no different than grouping Christianity, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. under the banner of "religion".

Well, I often have a problem with that too. People of other religions often assume that *my* religion requires a kind of faith similar to theirs, and that it affects my life in similar ways to theirs. When in fact different religions often have strikingly different effects on the societies in which they exist: for example, it's often said Islam encourages a confluence of spiritual and temporal authority, while in most Christian-majority societies this has rarely been the case since the Reformation. But I digress...

A lot of FLOSS people despise the term "intellectual property" since it's often used intentionally to confuse people, by encouraging the belief that trademarks, copyrights, and patents give the same kinds of monopoly rights. When in fact, this is far from true.

For example, Linus Torvalds holds the TRADEMARK for the name "Linux". But he does not hold the copyright for most of the code in the Linux kernel, since most of it has been written by other individuals and companies. And IBM may hold the patents on some algorithms used in the Linux kernel, but again this does not mean they hold the copyright for all of the code. None of this is a problem as long as no one is suing anyone.

But then we get ass clowns like SCO or Microsoft who come along and make threats about how "Linux is infringing on our 'intellectual property' rights." That frightens a lot of users needlessly, and it's complete bullshit unless they care to specify exactly what rights they are talking about: trademark, copyright, or patents. All have COMPLETELY different repercussions. The FSF are totally right to deplore the use of the term "intellectual property" in my opinion. It is meaningless except as FUD.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Trademark law is weird... unlike patents, coming up with it first doesn't matter. And once you have a trademark, you must aggressively defend it in order to keep it.

AOL may have been total dicks in this case, but its not clear that the law gives them a lot of wiggle room in this case. GAIM is a very prominent competing product with a similar name, and so it's quite likely that they could've lost their trademark right without taking this action.

I'm no trademark lawyer, but it sure seems to me that instead of being total dicks, they could have simply granted GAIM a low or zero-cost license to the trademark. Thus "protecting" their trademark and not wasting anyone's time.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[iminplaya]

I see IP as the control of ideas, or thoughts.

Copyright controls the distribution of ideas
Patents control the methods in which ideas are implemented
Trademark control the appearance or signage of ideas

All three serve the same purpose of the claim of ownership. The validity is unimportant for the sake of this discussion. I'm just saying here that the term intellectual property covers these control rather well. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost...or if you prefer:
The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan :-)

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[MoxFulder]

I see IP as the control of ideas, or thoughts.

Copyright controls the distribution of ideas
Patents control the methods in which ideas are implemented
Trademark control the appearance or signage of ideas

Oh, I don't deny the similarities between them, which you've appropriately recognized.

It's just that--in terms of actual business practices--there's no valid reason to conflate them. Trademark disputes, copyright disputes, and patent disputes should all be discussed and handled in different ways. I've never heard anyone publicly refer to their own "intellectual property" rights except as a threat.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[siddesu]

you're wrong. all religions serve similar function to their base, so grouping them under "religion" makes sense.

not so with the copyright and related rights. first, they aren't property rights, and second they serve different purpose. if you _must_ group them, then call them what they are -- limited monopoly rights granted in exchange for something else. for copyright, it is the (violated by the recent extensions) promise that pass some time the rights will revert to society (public domain). ditto for patent. for the trademark the justification logic is somewhat different, but nevertheless not in any way related to property rights.

the whole term "property rights" is being promoted by the same people who violate the copyright by extending it into perpetuity and the same people who abuse patents and trademarks to stifle competition and extend their monopoly over and over.

and so on.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[Tim C]

Anyone using the term "Intellectual Property" to group the three of them is either confused or is trying to mislead others.

No, they're using a convenient (if somewhat misleading) shortcut. Another poster has already pointed out the similarity to using the word "religion" to cover faiths that have little in common. Another example - at work, at various times, I do team leading, requirements gathering, specification writing, estimation, research, work on bids, write code, design software, and so no. My title is "Senior Programmer", even though actual programming may well be a relatively small part of my duties on any given project.

Patents, trademarks and copyright all refer to abstract things that many (most?) people treat as though they were property. As they're essentially ideas, they are in a very real sense "intellectual" in nature. Hence, "intellectual property". I don't really see it as being any less accurate than calling me just a programmer is. The problem only arises when people forget about the qualifier "intellectual" and start thinking in the same terms as they do for physical property.

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[Mathness]

You mean that an added letter to "make" a new word isn't protected? Hum, I guess that could explain why they only made and shipped one P-P-Powerbook. :p

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[iminplaya]

...then call them what they are -- limited monopoly rights granted in exchange for something else.

You're absolutely correct. The term probably came up because people do claim their thoughts as property. Of course if that's the case, they should pay property tax. However, what they are is a bit long winded. We need a catchy phrase. How about T.I.M. Temporary Intellectual Monopoly. No...not sexy enough. How about Publicly United Syndicate Serving Intellectual Endeavors...Close enough?

Re:For those wondering what Pidgin means

[iminplaya]

I've never heard anyone publicly refer to their own "intellectual property" rights except as a threat.

That's how it was meant to be used. It's a weapon. It's the buzzword for the new combo M-16 with grenade launcher, microwave oven, and boombox survival tool. It might even be trademarked.

Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[thephotoman]

I've been playing around with the 2.0 tree of Gaim for a while now, and now that the legal issues are fixed, it'll be nice to finally see a stable release version of Gaim with a reasonable feature set. I don't care what it's called.

Also, AOL needs to go off and die. The previous sentence is nothing but pandering to the /. crowd.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[oyenstikker]

You do realize that if AOL goes of and dies then AIM will stop working, right?

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Cylix]

Surely you jest!?!

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[thephotoman]

And good riddance to it! Then, we might see more Jabber uptake.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Rosonowski]

I think it's more likely that someone would buy up AOL and convert all the screennames to their own servers.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[zanglang]

Maybe _a little_? Let's not forget Microsoft and Yahoo here, they're almost like the de facto standard for instant messaging software in a lot of non-US countries. We geeks can rattle our Open Standards flag all we want, but I think Jabber (and clients. and Google, of course) still has a long way to get Dick, Smith and Harry from sticking with what their friends use.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Darundal]

Actually, worst case scenario, one of the many protocols gaim supports ends up not working. Ever.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[reub2000]

Good thing GAIM supports about a half-dozen protocols that aren't AIM. So I can keep on chatting with the same client.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Marcos Eliziario]

Looks like everybody has a gmail account. Dick, Smith and Harry are not likely going to disable the gtalk widget on gmail web interface. By default everyone that has a gmail account and that exchanged emails with them will be listed as a gtalk contact. Voila: a new jabber user.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Dpaladin]

There's no doubt that AOL sucks, but a LOT of users' only contact with their products is through AIM, which is far better than their browser (at least when I used it). They're just protecting their reputation and, more importantly, trying to avoid trademark dilution. The term Instant Messenger is already used by several other clients, particularly YIM. AOL would hate to see "MSN AIM" or "Google AIM" which would, of course, be shortened to "GAIM"

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Eccles]

He is jesting, but don't call him "Shirley."

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[NonSequor]

How do you rattle a flag?

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[zanglang]

You shake it until the cloth and adornments goes "Whipssh-Whipssh" on the pole. :P Okay, this is Slashdot, maybe I should have used a car analogy... /end offtopic

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Skreems]

Except now you can use it with your google login to chat with all your friends who use gmail. Even the ones who would have been too lazy to install an IM client.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[dodongo]

Also, AOL needs to go off and die. The previous sentence is nothing but pandering to the /. crowd.

And lookie there -- you got +5 AND Insightful. You lucky dog you :)

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[SeaFox]

You do realize that if AOL goes of and dies then AIM will stop working, right?

Yeah, but who cares? We're using Pidgin, the multi-protocol Instant Messenger Client. We'll just be using our MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr usrenames or chatting on IRC instead.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Seumas]

Good. Then everyone will finally move to jabber.

Please include Yahoo! and MSN in your wishful corporate death list, too. There's nothing worse than some douche who refuses to use anything but MSN or Yahoo! and they're the only asshole out of 200 friends, family and coworkers that use it so you can either never talk to them or sign up and use yet another protocol just for that one mindless bastard.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[hritcu]

You seem to forget that AOL trademarked AIM years after(!) Gaim was named Gaim. I can only wander, on what legal grounds can somebody claim a trademark retroactively, to a name that was already in use?

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Tanuki64]

This is simple: Might makes right.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[mshurpik]

>You do realize that if AOL goes of and dies then AIM will stop working, right?

Um, who cares? You mean you can't write an IM client yourself?

IM existed before AOL. AOL was responsible for putting line breaks between everyone's thoughts.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[GreatBunzinni]

We geeks can rattle our Open Standards flag all we want, but I think Jabber (and clients. and Google, of course) still has a long way to get Dick, Smith and Harry from sticking with what their friends use.

Long way? Not at all, at least to me. Let's ignore Google Talk for a moment. My ISP already offers a Jabber IM service and has been offering it for years. Granted, it isn't as popular as MS's messenger service but a lot of people do use it and I do mean a lot (more than IRC). It is also normal to find my ISP's jabber client present on library and school computers.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Bert64]

Then good, one less competing incompatible proprietary IM server out there...
The sooner IM is standardised, and works cross network like email the better.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Bert64]

Which is why we need interoperability between networks...
I don't use gtalk, i run my own jabber server, but i have lots of friends who use gtalk that i communicate with regularly.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[kisielk]

More likely the network would get absorbed and integrated in to either Google, MSN, or Yahoo....

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[JayJay.br]

You do realize that Pidgin/Gaim works with more than one protocol, right? Actually most people don't give a damn about aim, since they use it for MSN/GTalk.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Antique Geekmeister]

Good. Go take a look at the source code for Jabber. Isn't it nice how the default is to store your passwords in clear-text and leave them legible to anyone on the Jabber server? And to send them unencrypted over an open channel? And you as a client will never know or be able to tell if they're doing this?

Are you really sure this is the standard you want to promote for remote communications?

I also suspect that you don't spend much time on the IRC warez or cracker channels: rootkits installing IRC servers are still a major problem for a lot of us to deal with, and I've never seen this for jabber.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Blakey Rat]

It couldn't be any worse than the current version: ugly and buggy.

I'd give my right ankle for a port of Adium to Windows, or any other platform than OS X for that matter. It's the only multi-protocol IM client that doesn't suck. (Well, it still sucks for file transfers... but it doesn't suck nearly as much as the others.)

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Blakey Rat]

AIM is the only one of those non-standardized protocols that can consistently transfer files from one computer to another. Until at least one of the other ones can, I'd like it to stick around.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[thephotoman]

To be fair, it looks much better in an entirely GTK+ environment. Adium would also look like crap in Windows, and I should probably mention that Adium is simply a frontend for Gaim.

No, what we need in Windows is a frontend of libgaim that uses the native Windows widget set--or something that looks better on Windows than GTK+.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Blakey Rat]

DId you miss the second screenshot where the window was halfway off the screen with no way to move or resize it? It's not like that was a small monitor, it was 1024x768... GAIM didn't even slightly attempt to make the window fit the screen. And I don't have screenshots of the dozen times it crashed. Even if it didn't look like cat barf, there's still the HUGE NUMBER OF BUGS keeping me from using it. In fact, I'd prefer the bugs me fixed before the horrible appearance be fixed anyway.

The real problem is that I have a lot of open source-loving friends who always tell me programs like GAIM are the best thing ever and if I don't use them I'm going to hell. Then when I do use them, I get this half-finished ugly, buggy technology that disappoints greatly. Then a couple years later, I get the "oh, it's much better now" spiel and, stupidly, I try it again, and it's still half-finished, ugly and buggy.

Adium, with its current OS X appearance assuming Windows widgets, would actually probably look pretty good in Windows if it was ported. In fact, even if it didn't use Windows widgets, it would look fine in Vista. It's all a pipe-dream, though, since Adium is developed by some of those obnoxious Mac users who refuse to port useful software. See also: TextMate, SubEthaEdit. I hate those people even more than I hate people who tell me to use half-finished open source software.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[thephotoman]

A well-written native frontend for Windows would probably help in that regard. Also, that is a beta version, which is, by definition, half finished and buggy.

Have you ever stopped to think that, perhaps instead of being simply obnoxious, the Mac developers that make some pretty damn good software have difficulty in porting to Windows simply due to fundamental differences in what ships with the platform? You do realize that a lot of Mac stuff is written in Java, which is entirely unsupported in Windows, right? Adium, once again, is simply libgaim with a frontend using OS X's native widgets--not something that can be ported to Windows, as the widget set does not exist there. It would take a great deal of work to actually port Adium to Windows, from people that have lots of experience in Windows development. Windows and Mac are very different development platforms. Your ire is entirely misdirected.

Now that Gaim's frontend and backend are separate, the development of a better frontend for Windows (and KDE, as Gaim looks like shit there, too) should be much easier.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[GreatBunzinni]

Good. Go take a look at the source code for Jabber. Isn't it nice how the default is to store your passwords in clear-text and leave them legible to anyone on the Jabber server? And to send them unencrypted over an open channel? And you as a client will never know or be able to tell if they're doing this?

Jabber is a protocol and not a piece of random software. Therefore, as it is easy to understand, directing someone to check out "jabber's source code" does not make any sense. As a consequence, all that fear-inflicting warning about possible security issues is very silly, to say the least. Moreover, security through SASL and TLS is present even in the core Jabber specifications and nowadays every decent Jabber client (Pidgin, Kopete, Psi, Adium X, Google Talk, etc etc etc...) supports encryption. So, as it easy to see, your fearmongering regarding the big bad wolf of unencrypted communication is completely groundless. Do you even have a clue of what is this thing called Jabber?

Are you really sure this is the standard you want to promote for remote communications?

Why yes. Yes, I do. It's an open protocol, it is very extensive, it has a solid support for secure connectivity and encryption and there are tons of great clients to use. If that wasn't enough, it not only supports text messaging but also VoIP. How do you beat that? You don't.

I also suspect that you don't spend much time on the IRC warez or cracker channels: rootkits installing IRC servers are still a major problem for a lot of us to deal with, and I've never seen this for jabber.

That is pretty much irrelevant to this discussion, isn't it?

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Pakaran2]

That would be worse than you make it sound though. Many, actually most, of my friends use AIM on Windows. It's quite likely that if gaim had to drop AIM support, some of them would simply give up talking to me, rather than install yet another messenger program specifically to talk to me. That would not, in fact, be pleasant for me.

And no, using another IM program that supports Linux might work for awhile, but I expect AOL would sue them too for something sooner or later. Illegal access to their servers, if nothing else.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Blackknight]

No big loss, we still have a bunch of other IM systems to use.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Junior J. Junior III]

Also, AOL needs to go off and die.

Has the word "fuck" been trademarked too, now? Geez!

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[thephotoman]

Yes, it has. So have shit, piss, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Blame George Carlin.

Re:Can't wait to see 2.0.0

[Seumas]

Right. The important thing being interoperability. Simply having a yahoo, AIM and MSN protocol that you can install on your jabber server isn't enough. I don't want to go through the hassle of giving my information to and creating an account for every instant messaging service that someone uses who I need to communicate with. It should be enough that I have a jabber account and AIM and other clients/protocols should automatically be able to identify what protocol I'm on, who I am and how to communicate with me.

Imagine if only Sprint customers could talk to Sprint users, Verizon customers could talk to Verizon customers and Tmobile customers could talk to other Tmobile customers. And if you were a Sprint customer but you wanted to talk to someone who had their plan on Verizon, you had to have both a Sprint and a Verizon account and phone. Ridiculous!

Late April Fools? Please...

[Chineseyes]

Please let this be a Joke thats a terrible name.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[644bd346996]

No, it's a perfect name for such a product. They obviously know how the product is used. In fact, I'm rather surprised the name wasn't already taken.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Lazarian]

I'd hope for the same thing too. Pidgin??? Seriously, it sounds stupid. You'd think that they'd be able to come up with a better name than that. It doesn't have to be an acronym either.

The same goes for GIMP as well.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please let this be a Joke thats a terrible name.

I don't think its That bad you said The same thing about Firefox youll get Used to it

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

Please let this be a Joke thats a terrible name.

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.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[hendridm]

I think it was due for a new name. Gaim? It has nothing more to do with AIM than it does with the other IM protocols. In fact, I use Gaim for YIM and MSN... I don't even have an AIM account.

Although Pidgin sounds weird, I can imagine it is *very* difficult to find a name for something that isn't currently used. I guess I don't really care - I'll still happily use it :)

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Are you suggesting that my new mail program called "Hey Boss I Fucked Your Wife" should be renamed? It's a perfectly good name I think.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Actually, it's a good name for AOL's IM program. Because whenever I tried to use it, I get the feeling that the computer would waddle over and take a dump on my shoes.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Three Headed Man]

I completely agree. My idea is a name like "G-Star" which sounds pretty cool and is a way of thumbing their nose at AOL.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[RedElf]

They should have named it "FOIM", that would leave a simple 4 letter name like before, while telling AOL exactly what they and their lawyers can go do.

If you still haven't figured out what the FO in FOIM stands for, leave that up to your imagination...

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[metamatic]

A gimp is something well-formed, or beautiful.

Yes, well, a faggot is a bundle of sticks tied together to be used as fuel, but that doesn't mean it would be a well-advised name for a package management system.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[zephos]

You might have had a point with a better example. AOL's Instant Messaging program gets abbreviated AIM and we all just call in AIM which is a bloody terrible name. It already has a meaning in the English language that has nothing to do with text messaging. There is no way you can logically stretch 'aim' (as in to target) to deal with conversing with people in text.

More importantly the GIMP is only the name used for brevity's sake. GIMP = GNU Image Manipulation Program. If you are so embarrassed about using the name GIMP at the office (while using Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Skype, AIM, MSN, from companies like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo) then call it by its longer name. The point that you struggle with is brand identity. AIM, Apple, OSX, iPod, and Wii only seem like decent names because they have strong brand identity. The reason Ekiga is a "crappy" name when compared with Skype is because Skype is the bigger brand (at the moment).

You could call your product "turd on a stick" and if it sold amazingly will consumers would call it a genius naming scheme.

Pidgin although seemingly odd now will feel natural when users start using it and the next "generation" of nerds grows up only knowing it as pidgin. Plus it is a lot easier to craft advertising around a pigeon than a GAIM (whatever that would be.)

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[jbrader]

It stands for Furry Orangutan right?

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Cyberax]

Thanks for idea! That's how I'm going to name my new build system based on SCons :) ...Ducks...

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[aaronl]

Not quite. GNU Image Manipulation Program is more of a backronym than anything. They decided that they wanted to call it "The GIMP" and tried to justify such a horrible name. You see this occasionally in amateur projects, and this is one reason they *stay* that way is the name. The GIMP got popular despite the name, because it is a capable program.

None of the other projects you mentioned, save the Wii, have any potentially offensive connotations. It doesn't matter what the silly thing supposedly stands for. The menu items and branding is "THE GIMP", and that offends a great many english speakers.

Ekiga is fine, as a name, since it is unique and fairly memorable. Skype is fine, too, but it does have more brand recognition today. There are products out there that do have names as bad as "turd on a stick" and they mostly still exist because of the name. They are always a very niche product, and so they don't make the manufacturer very much money. For example, there is a ski goggle anti-fogging cleaner called "Cat Crap" that works really well, but most people haven't heard of it. The first time you buy it is either for the novelty, or because someone told you it was great. It isn't a product that you can really mass advertise, though, because it will get too many people upset.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Breakfast Pants]

A pidgin is a language used to bridge two or more other languages, and is usually simplified, lol.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

...and Gay means happy, however in common usage today the first thought people have if you call someone gay is that they're homosexual. Common usage, slang or otherwise trumps other meanings as that's the first association made.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

You could call your product "turd on a stick" and if it sold amazingly will consumers would call it a genius naming scheme.

Yes but you might be surprised that if you call a product "turd on a stick" you might not find it sells too well. (in fact shock horror some places might refuse to sell it). If you did such a thing and then were to whine about your product not selling I'd dismiss you as an idiot. It's unfortunate that somehow technical knowledge and understanding of social behaviour seem to be mutually exclusive in most people.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

Another one with the social skills of Elmer Fudd! I know what the acroynm stands for you condescending fool. I also know a bunch of technically brilliant but not overly mature people made the decision to call it that.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[M. Baranczak]

do you know how hard it is to explain why you're using "The Gimp" or what "The Gimp" is?

I'm currently working on a next-generation graphics editing program called 'Broomstick Up The Ass'. Would you be interested in beta-testing it?

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

I'm currently working on a next-generation graphics editing program called 'Broomstick Up The Ass'. Would you be interested in beta-testing it?

What are the bugs? Splinters? Is it any better than your last work: Shitting bricks?

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[MoxFulder]

I'd hope for the same thing too. Pidgin??? Seriously, it sounds stupid. You'd think that they'd be able to come up with a better name than that. It doesn't have to be an acronym either.

As a linguistics nerd, I totally frickin' disagree. Pidgin is an awesome name, since it refers to a language that develops to allow people to communicate who don't share a common language. IM with GAIM is a lot like that, since it supports different protocols with a unifying interface. And because IM-speak often seems to exhibit the simplified grammar of many English-lexified pidgins.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[belgar]

Unfortunately, as Idiocracy supports, the elegance of the name and its nuanced meaning, is totally fucking lost on the great unwashed.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[rohan972]

Yes but you might be surprised that if you call a product "turd on a stick" you might not find it sells too well.

To reflect the up to date, contemporary nature of my product, I am appending the word "Today" to the name.

TOAST anyone?

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Maybe someone can make a mail program name which makes MILF as an acronym.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[dvice_null]

Have you ever tried inventing a new name for an open source project and use a name that hasn't been already taken? I actually tried inventing a new name for a paint program once and I can tell you that every name that contains the words "paint, photo, draw, color, ..." are taken. If you need to explain what Gimp means, then do so. It means GNU Image Manipulation Program

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Lazarian]

Even though I was snarky in my opinion in the choice of naming, the meaning of the word "pidgin" was not totally fucking lost on me. I still think it's a poor choice.

I apologize for insulting your haughty sense of elegance with my great unwashedness.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

OK, I really didn't know that. Maybe that really does make sense with respect to the program formerly known as gaim. For several reasons, I'm not fond of IM and I don't even have a current IM name with any IM service, unless you count the Yahoo or Gmail IM services, but I've never used their IM services.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[mackyrae]

Gorilla Snot is used to keep drummers from having their sticks fly out of their sweaty hands or guitarists from dropping picks.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Gossi]

Ssssh, Ubuntu's developers might be listening. After Hoary Hedgehog, we have the new release with FAGGOT package management!

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[SnowZero]

Not to mention you'd get sued for any name containing {paint, photo, draw, color, ...}. I don't like the name GIMP, but I can understand why they needed something very different from existing programs. That's the real reason most OSS programs have strange names -- all the obvious ones are already trademarked.

That said, I don't know about pidgin though, but maybe it will grow on me. I used to use "everybuddy", which has a great name for a multi-protocol IM program, but eventually it got eclipsed by Gaim/Pidgin.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

Oh please! It was an immature joke on the part of the developers, not some requirement for a unique name that drove them to the name "GIMP". Get a clue. What are you going to suggest next?: That regretably the next text editor will need to be called AnalEdit to avoid litigation?

Hell you could have named it IMPG to avoid calling it GIMP. If that's taken single person can come up with thousands of names, and if you get a cease and desist you rename your product just as others have before. If you truely have so little imagination that you can't come up with a name, or are so gullible as to think it's impossible to come up with a new name that isn't owned by a megacorp, I suggest you go back to your teachers and request a refund for your education. By defending this kind of stupidity and insanity you're contributing to it.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

I don't think so. If you get sued you argue it, otherwise you're admitting to being owned. There have been enough products with the words paint, draw, colour, photo etc. that you could argue it's in common use. Giving up like that is pathetic. See my comments to other people's nonsense.

In any case while I'll grant you the name GIMP is unique and non-obvious, it hasn't been used for another reason. It's not desirable.

I'm sure a Gaming company could contest the use of the name Gaim, and some company will have used the word Pidgin somewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

The name GIMP is nothing more than an immature joke that's holding back a good OS product.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Penguinisto]

...and let us not forget Sex Wax, the best damned surfboard stuff on the planet... (protects the board a bit, slicks it up against water, helps the feet stick... good stuff all around).

/P

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[FooBarWidget]

Yes, let's rename it to Linux Instant Messenger Plus. Would that satisfy you?

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[jb.hl.com]

Mail In Lightweight Folders.

Failing that, there's always the Communication Utility for Now and Tomorrow.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[vux984]

Are you suggesting that my new mail program called "Hey Boss I Fucked Your Wife" should be renamed? It's a perfectly good name I think.

Lousy acronym though... HBIFYW. How the fuck is that alphabet vomit recited?
How about "Boss I Screwed Your Bitch" which reduces neatly to "BisyB" pronounced of course, "busybee".

Not only does it roll off the tongue, but the term 'busybee' can mean both someone who 'works hard' (a suitable and innocuous name for an office oriented productivity application like your mail program). Or it could mean one who 'gets around' [promiscuously] which is a perfect fit given the actual expanded title.

Hmmm. Maybe still not enough geek cred though. I don't see any recursion.

How about "IMBisyB" - "IMBisyB Means Boss I Screwed Your Bitch", pronounced of course "I'm Busybee"

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Hal_Porter]

Your sig

"Conservatism is a failed ideology which has joined communism in the trash heap of history"

Communism was a totalitarian ideology which staid in power by force. Once it lost power it ceased to exist. In a democracy, "conservatism" is whatever the right of centre party does when they are in government. If it becomes unpopular, they spend a period out of office until they can reinvent it is something enough people agree with to get back in power to win again. So in a paradoxical sort of way conservatism is immortal - so long as you have alternation of power between two parties, you'll always have conservatism.

That's not to say that current conservatism has much in common with 50's conservatism though, or will have much in common with conservatism in fifty years time.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[SharpFang]

Well, in most users impression, Gimp is, well, a gimped Photoshop.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Linker3000]

Maybe it was a case of 'find an apt domain name first and then name the project'.

We're lucky the software wasn't renamed ClownPenis.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[SillyNickName4me]

Conservatism is the tendency to keep things as they are unless a proven better alternative shows up, potentially hindering progress (not to be confused with reactionism, which keeps things as they are despite proven better alternatives).

Right now, striving for a small government in the USA is not conservative because the current US government is nto small and hasn't been small for a long time. Wanting to reduce the size of government would better be called progressive, because it is quite a change from the current situation.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[dalmiroy2k]

Back when everybody called Nintendo's upcoming console "Revolution", everybody hated "Wii" when it got announced as the official name. Some months later, everybody loves Wii (Except maybe Sony fanboys).

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[nutshell42]

Well, once upon a time there were lots of programs called X"description", e.g. Xchat, Xpaint, Xwhatever.

Then there came KDE and they saw that it made sense and they called their programs K"description".

Then there came lots of trolls making fun of that because they were stupid. And they were so persistant (there's still no KDE article on /. without at least one Khave Kyou Kseen Ktheir Kstupid Knames joKe) and so obnoxious, that nowadays you can't release a Linux program with a name that actually makes sense.

Kcuf

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[xtracto]

I use The Gimp at work. Could you pick a worse name?

The Pimp?

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Hal_Porter]

Conservatism is the tendency to keep things as they are unless a proven better alternative shows up

That doesn't sound too bad to me. But it also doesn't capture current conservatism very well. Democratising the middle east doesn't fit into that definition and yet current conservatives support it.

Right now, striving for a small government in the USA is not conservative because the current US government is nto small and hasn't been small for a long time. Wanting to reduce the size of government would better be called progressive, because it is quite a change from the current situation.

That's actually one of the things I'd expect to change. If the Republicans run on a small government ticket, socially liberal ticket they'd do a lot better. E.g, they could let The Economist editorial staff design their policies.

Hmm, come to think of it, that's wishful thinking. Still I think the next Republican administration will distance itself from a lot of the Bush II policies in some way, in much the same way that Clinton distanced himself from lots of Democrat conventional wisdom that had become very unpopular in the country at large.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[SillyNickName4me]

That doesn't sound too bad to me. But it also doesn't capture current conservatism very well. Democratising the middle east doesn't fit into that definition and yet current conservatives support it.

Well, the NEOconservatives say they support this. Note that they call themselves neoconservative and not conservative. WHile they hijacked the word conservative there, their policies and ideas really have very little to do with "conservatism".

We can have a long discussion now about if this is really what the neocons are after, I really don't believe them in this, but that is besides the point.

That's actually one of the things I'd expect to change. If the Republicans run on a small government ticket, socially liberal ticket they'd do a lot better. E.g, they could let The Economist editorial staff design their policies.

Hmm, come to think of it, that's wishful thinking. Still I think the next Republican administration will distance itself from a lot of the Bush II policies in some way, in much the same way that Clinton distanced himself from lots of Democrat conventional wisdom that had become very unpopular in the country at large.

Next problem here.. equaling republican with conservative.

Ever heard about the solid south during the times of civil rights changes? Guess who wanted to keep things as they are, and guess which party was representing them... wrong, not the republicans but the democrats championed the solid south.

Conservative and liberal have become completely useless words in US politics simply because those words have been hijacked way too often by people trying to misdirect voters, to the point where being conservative means promoting change, and being liberal means restricting freedoms.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[springbox]

Well if people are going to get you in trouble for using an program that's known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program (also known as The GIMP), then I wonder how sensitive said people are. Have you tried explaining what the acronym means? I don't have a problem with the name and if anyone asks, it's easily explained.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[syousef]

Once I explain it's no problem, but it's embarassing having to explain that the best open source image editor is named GIMP as a childish prank.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Millenniumman]

i dont undrstnd hw ppl tlkn on aol culd b mistkn 4 ppl speakin a pidgin lang. roflmaool!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111oneoneone!!!!!!!!!!

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Actually, my sig is simply an attempt to annoy. If I thought that "conservativism smells like your grandma" would be more annoying, I would use it. If you read my journal, there's a difference between rhetoric and truth. The sig isn't truth, it's rhetoric.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Another reply, you really should read my journal. I do have a theory which does capture conservatism well. Actually, it's a general theory which I am trying (and believe I have succeeded in) extending to libertarianism as well. Please read my back journals about framing and then ask me questions.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[metamatic]

Actually, the FAGGOT package manager has been pushed back to Ubuntu 8.1 "Gay Giraffe".

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[zephos]

I had no idea that the naming of the GIMP went that way. I learned something today.

Perhaps it wasn't obvious in the post, but my point wasn't that people should call their projects whatever they want without thought of the consequences, but instead that as long as the name is within a certain level of decency and the product it represents is impressive enough the name decreases in importance.

After all most product names make very little sense or are awkward combinations of words that do make sense. Again my point is that Pidgin will be a fine name because gaim is such a quality piece of software

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[zephos]

Well I never intended to suggest that "turd on a stick" was a wise marketing decision for a product, but instead that in terms of products (and especially F/OSS projects) that the only initially is the name of the product important. Once a product gets popular enough the name is irrelevant because whatever the name was, whatever symbol was otherwise used it become identifiable as the product in question.

We as a culture no longer thing Q-tips are a funny name, or saying "just Google it" is awkward or meaningless because those names have become the product.

If gaim is as a solid piece of software five years from now no one in the world will think pidgin was a poor name choice, they won't be able to think of an alternative.

Re:Late April Fools? Please...

[thebagel]

Merriam-Webster online provides three noun definitions:
1) an ornamental flat braid or round cord used as a trimming
2) spirit, vim (the odd definition of the bunch)
3) cripple, limp
and a verb definition:
4) limp, hobble

Princeton WordNet provides the following definitions:
Noun: lameness, limping, gimp, gimpiness, gameness, claudication (disability of walking due to crippling of the legs or feet)
Verb: limp, gimp, hobble, hitch (walk impeded by some physical limitation or injury)

A query of dictionary.com reveals several definitions, none of which imply any level of beauty or perfection of form. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gimp)

Additionally, saying "it's also a dressmaker's tool" is slightly incorrect; it's actually a term better applied to fabric trimming in general.

The bottom line is that open source software names just suck - regardless of what the acronym GIMP may stand for, the name itself is not intuitive, as others (say, Photo Paint, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro) might be.

Whilst a shame...

[Smerity]

Whilst a shame they had to change the project's name, the tenet of "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" still holds. It remains one of the best IM programs available across platforms.
Good name change too! Reminiscent of Perl - small, simple and altered just enough to distinguish itself from a common noun.

Re:Whilst a shame...

[oyenstikker]

Pidgin _is_ a noun.

Re:Whilst a shame...

[Exatron]

"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

Not if they called it a stenchblossom.

Re:Whilst a shame...

[ConvertEJ__]

Gaim was shorter >_>

AOL needs to crash and burn. End of story.

Re:Whilst a shame...

[thegrassyknowl]

It remains one of the most widely ported IM packages across platforms. That doesn't mean it's less sucky than the official AIM (or other) clients.

I thought GAIM was a piece of poo.. What's with that fucked up away dialog box to tell you that your GAIM status is busy? I want GAIM to fuck off into the background when I am busy, not pop up a dialog telling me that and taking up valuable screen real-estate on my already cluttered desktop.

Gaim should have gone and got a job as a cheap asian street hooker a long time ago ("sucky sucky, free, free, I able to suck everyone")

Re:Whilst a shame...

[Lehk228]

that window doesn't exist anymore, now it's a little selector at the bottom of your buddy list

Re:Whilst a shame...

[thegrassyknowl]

Yay - I stopped using Gaim a long time ago because of that window - and the devs at the time said that they weren't going to remove it (or even make it a configurable option) because that was they way they thought all users should work. You can search the gaim lists for that discussion.

If the shitty window is gone the new Gaim might be worth trying out again.

Re:Whilst a shame...

[aggemam]

You insensitive clod. I will so not go out with you!

-Louise

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[Tragek]

From wikipedia:

A pidgen, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages. Pidgins have simplified grammars and few synonyms, serving as auxiliary contact languages. They are learned as second languages rather than natively.

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.

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[Eudial]

Am I the only one who had to say the new name outloud about 3 times before I could actually say it?

Yes.

The acronym seems good at least.

[Mr EdgEy]

pIM? Heh. Seems strange that basically one letter can be trademarked though.

Re:The acronym seems good at least.

[rekkanoryo]

The name is Pidgin, not Pidgin IM. Therefore PIM is inaccurate.

Damn Shame

[Enderandrew]

I used to really love Gaim. But other messengers have begun to really surpass it.

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

[Constantine XVI]

"Anyone recall separate independent email systems before one unified email standard?"
That's what Jabber was created for.
The Gai[esc]dw[i]Pidgin/Kopete/Miranda/Trillian split is mostly because they're designed for different platforms. Pidgin is GTK+(and GNOME by extension, though I run it on Windows), Kopete is KDE, Miranda is Windows, and Trillian needs to drop off the face of the earth (kidding, it's Windows, but proprietary, not much better than Gaim, and bloated to hell :)

Re:Damn Shame

[AtlanticCarbon]

What are these other (open-source) messengers that have surpassed it? I'd like to try them out.

Re:Damn Shame

[malevolentjelly]

I whole-heartedly disagree with you, sir. There is absolutely no reason to use a lowest-common-denominator gui for a basic and functional program like gaim. Projects like Adium have taken things like libgaim and made them usable and beautiful and integrated. Coding a multi-platform GUI should never be a limiting factor in projects- it's much more intelligent, practical, and over-all better to just create a separate GUI for each popular system. I'm all for libgaim, but I think gaim as the every-OS IM client is just poor design practice.

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.

Re:Damn Shame

[rekkanoryo]

Pidgin has never been a GNOME application, even when it was originally named Gaim. Sure, it uses GTK+, but that in itself does not make an application a GNOME application. I will grant you that an inordinate amount of focus has gone into making Pidgin play nice on GNOME with no similar effort spent on KDE or XFCE integration, but this again does not make Pidgin a GNOME app.

Re:Damn Shame

[TubeSteak]

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,

Advertising.

If you have a universal standard, what reason is there for anyone to use one (official, ad-supported) client over another?

AOL wants to advertise to people on AIM, ditto for MSN, Yahoo & others.
The IM client & service is not free.
It is ad supported.

Re:Damn Shame

[rekkanoryo]

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.

Re:Damn Shame

[moosesocks]

I beg to differ. Although it is Gaim-Based, and only runs on one platform, Adium is the undisputed champion of textual messaging.

It's really really rare to come across a program that is extremely easy to use, but is completely extensible and customizable (with minimal effort). Winamp is the only other widely-popular program I can think of that fits that description (and perhaps Firefox to a somewhat lesser extent...)

If you've got a mac to play around with, I highly reccommend checking it out.

Re:Damn Shame

[rekkanoryo]

I have a Mac. I use Adium for my limited OSX IM needs. I hate it with a passion.

Re:Damn Shame

[SimGuy]

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.

Sean Egan did not jump ship. He is still in charge of the project and has been managing the whole legal process (and everything related to it) since AOL started going after him.

Re:Damn Shame

[moranar]

Funny, the Adium developers don't seem to have a particular problem with this. Perhaps nobody told them when they scarted using TLFKA libgaim?

Re:Damn Shame

[wild_berry]

See RFC 3290 for the IETF RFC spec of XMPP and XMPP.org for the home of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol.

Your call for collaboration does not help the business models of AOL (AIM), Microsoft (Windows Live! Messenger) or Apple (iChat) because it cedes their control and might lose users from their platform. The big names aren't interested in it, but we-the-little-people can run our own network of OpenID enabled Jabber chatting.

Re:Damn Shame

[Cochonou]

Could you elaborate on this just out of curiousity ?
For my limited IM needs, I fail to see what could make me prefer gaim over Adium. That probably means we have very different IM needs, and I would like to know how they differ.

Re:Damn Shame

[hritcu]

Sean Egan did not jump ship. He is still in charge of the project and has been managing the whole legal process (and everything related to it) since AOL started going after him.

• Google Hires Gaim's Main Developer.
• Google Buys 5% Of AOL for $1 Billion
• AOL threatens "Gaim's Main Developer" with legal dispute. Most of us think this is EVIL.

Doesn't this make Google 5% evil?

Re:Damn Shame

[CiderJack]

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.

Lo, have we forgotten the humble IRC?

Re:Damn Shame

[zsau]

Yay! Absolutely true, every single word of it! Cross-platform guis generally suck and they're a waste of time. I have never met one I like. Write awesome cross-platform libraries to do the work and write awesome platform-supecific guis to do the hci, because I don't didn't choose my operating system because it doesn't support my hardware as well as the other options.

Re:Damn Shame

[darkwhite]

Pidgin hasn't really been surpassed in its core focus--textual instant messaging. Gaim is nothing but a steaming pile of crap in its core focus--textual instant messaging. It crashes all the time and its UI usability is best described as "inspiring to claw your eyes out with a spoon". Besides the obvious UI problems, Gaim suffers from that unmistakable malaise of many projects associated with Gnome, the equal mix of incomprehensible and misplaced settings and features and the drive to remove any and all customization options from the UI.

At least one free project, Kopete, is light years ahead of Gaim in its core competency (text messaging). There are several other closed-source ones on Windows and Mac. There might be other open ones too, I don't know - it's not hard to beat Gaim's ingenious UI.

Re:Damn Shame

[Blakey Rat]

Funny, the Adium developers don't seem to have a particular problem with this. Perhaps nobody told them when they scarted using TLFKA libgaim?

Particular problem with what, exactly? What is TLFKA? What on earth are you replying to?

Re:Damn Shame

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, yes, Jabber is great and it's XML and it takes out the trash every tuesday morning.

But AIM and MSN transfer files. Jabber doesn't. That's a HUGE oversight that's yet to be fixed. Until Jabber has feature-parity with MSN and AIM (and I don't mean the goofy stuff like' nudges', just the ability to transfer files and in-line images), it'll never really catch on. You're not going to get people to switch from A to B if B doesn't do what A does.

Re:Damn Shame

[Enderandrew]

Specific client features.

The universal standard should govern an address/identity for each user that anyone on the planet can reach. The standard should cover a basis for an XML profile, that individual clients can add to or further tailor. The standard should cover how a basic message, voice, or video transmission is governed. Beyond that people can add Yahoo Avatars, or backgrounds, or talking dogs and such as they see fit.

Re:Damn Shame

[Enderandrew]

Chat and IM are two different beasts. IRC requires specific servers and rooms for one, and has little to no real means for you to have any permanent sense of address or identity for people to reach you.

Re:Damn Shame

[moranar]

tlfka = "the library formerly known as ..." . The rest of the post is not so clever (it's actually bullshit), I just meant that adium devs don't have many problems using libpurple on OS X, without seeing that you had already mentioned them.
Sorry

Re:Damn Shame

[Millenniumman]

Apple has its own system, in addition to AIM. But iChat does support Jabber.

Re:Damn Shame

[sveinungkv]

But AIM and MSN transfer files. Jabber doesn't.

You mean like this?

Re:Damn Shame

[Blakey Rat]

I just meant that adium devs don't have many problems using libpurple on OS X, without seeing that you had already mentioned them.

That's even more confusing. What's "libpurple?" When did I mention them?

Nevermind, I give up. As a point of advice, though: MAKE SENSE!

Re:Damn Shame

[Blakey Rat]

You mean like this?

No, I mean like "I drag a file into your Jabber IM window and you receive that file." I don't give a crap about experimental this and proposed draft that, I just want something that works and works now. MSN and AIM work now to transfer files, Jabber doesn't.

If you can show me a working Jabber client that does this, I've love to see it. I've never seen one.

Re:Damn Shame

[sveinungkv]

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).

To support all the networks well all that is needed to cooperate on is the connectors to the different networks. At the same time it should be possible for different connectors to exist for the same network in case developers disagree on how it should be made. And the connectors should be isolated to different processes so a crash in a connector don't take down the others. Luckily this already exist in the telepathy framework.

Re:Damn Shame

[moranar]

libpurple is the new name for libgaim.

Re:Damn Shame

[rekkanoryo]

I have just addressed this in this comment: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=229897&c id=18655919

Please ignore my hostile attitude there as it is mostly directed at the anonymous post to which I was responding. In short, I am used to Pidgin's interface and don't like any other IM client's interface because of being so used to Pidgin.

Re:Damn Shame

[sveinungkv]

Try Google talk. (They use a custom extension that is not standardized jet, so I don't think it will work when transferring to other clients)

Re:Damn Shame

[Constantine XVI]

Oops, bad wording on my part. That phrase should have been:
GTK+(and happens to play really nice with GNOME...

Re:Damn Shame

[darkwhite]

...And don't even get me started with the wonderful i18n bugs that GAIM has all over the place. "Hasn't really been surpassed" my ass. I even tried 2.0, it's as shitty as it ever was.

As for the name change, well, it makes it that much less likely that I'll ever use GAIM again. (Not that there was a big chance to begin with...)

Can you tell it's been one of the most frustrating pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure to use?

Re:Damn Shame

[LibrePensador]

Try gizmoproject from gizmoproject.com

Re:Damn Shame

[Cochonou]

Thanks for your answer.

Re:Damn Shame

[Bert64]

There is already a standard - Jabber... The only major IM provider to support it is Google tho...
However, there is no reason that other vendors couldn't write jabber support into their backend servers, so they could interoperate with other jabber servers while keeping the client and connection between it and server proprietary.
I long for the day when i can have a single IM address, and intercommunicate with every other IM user in the same way using the same address and same client.

april fools

[minus_273]

this should have been posted on april first.

Are we sure this is real?

[bofkentucky]

I'll let someone else do the first installs.

Re:Are we sure this is real?

[Enderandrew]

Very sure.

AOL gives away their services for free right now, mimicing Yahoo and Google, trying to get by on having a large network of users they can direct targeted advertisements at.

If people opt not to use AOL products and services, AOL loses money.

If the project has an obscure name, people are more likely to never hear of it, or pass it over.

GAIM sounds like an AIM replacement.

I nominate that we all say a big fuck you to AOL and forever refer to Pidgin as the Program Formerly Known as Gaim.

Re:Are we sure this is real?

[metamatic]

I nominate that we all say a big fuck you to AOL and forever refer to Pidgin as the Program Formerly Known as Gaim.

I vote we do it by switching to Jabber/XMPP.

Re:Are we sure this is real?

[zxsqkty]

Veering slightly off-topic here, but:

If people opt not to use AOL products and services, AOL loses money.

Be careful with the phraseology citizen. Witness:

If people opt to pirate RIAA products and services, RIAA artists starve.

Don't confuse a lost opportunity for advertising revenue (which this is) with a budget shortfall (claimed) based on optimistically projected earnings from potential sales.

The difference is subtle, and the wording is similar, but the reality is nonetheless distinct.

Seems reasonable...

[ancientt]

It seems reasonable that if your product is Product Sucks and you offer Product Sucks Messenger (PSM) and somebody else comes out with something that works like your product, only better and names it GNPSM (GPSM's Not PSM) then you'd have a reasonable complaint. It seems odd to me that this wasn't voluntarily changed years ago.

I personally have used both products and wouldn't use the "official" AOL client if I had any choice and in fact have never personally installed it on my computers. I've had the misfortune of using computers that had it foisted on them but sometimes its hard to convince people to switch when they already have something they "know how to use."

I'm sure the new name has wide approval and it's too late for suggestions, but I wish they'd gone with "Nonsucky Chat Client" instead.

I know it is coming so I'll head it off, yes your client is better for whatever reason you claim. Yes, I've used IRSSI, Zinc, XChat, Mozilla's whatever it was called and others. I like the client formerly known as Gaim because it was always easy to set up and easy to use and easy to explain.

Look out for Pelican

[cxreg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T569Z8t8ZA0

good

[nanosquid]

Why should a successful multi-protocol open source project advertise an obsolete on-line service anyway?

Countless projects..

[Mr EdgEy]

Have names similar to what you suggest, think of things like FreeDOS...

Re:Countless projects..

[torako]

Is DOS trademarked? The dictionary says that DOS is (any) Disk Operating System, although that general sense is nowadays seldom used.

Death do gaim developers publically declared

[sofar]

Quote pidgin.im: "Also, we have chosen to go with monotone for our revision control".

That's a clear notice to me that they do not want anyone checking out their source code and having people hack on it.

I once revived a gaim plugin and made it working again, only to be tremendously discouraged by the core gaim crowd (not to mention #gaim has been a worse flame-promoting hostile channel on freenode forever) in actually helping out.

This is a great step for all Open Source IM users I think: Gaim is dead. nobody will know Pidgin, perhaps now a *decent* IM client will arise that doesn't bring the poisoned atmosphere from the gaim crowd.

I'll drink to that.

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[rekkanoryo]

This is not saying that the developers don't want people hacking on Pidgin. There are currently plans in place to implement a Subversion gateway so that casual hackers can pull the Pidgin source and create their patches and whatnot. The reason behind the switch to monotone is that a distributed version control system fits more in line with the core developers' workflow, working on things separate from the main line for weeks and sometimes months before pushing to the public version control in order to minimize breakage and other issues. Take for example the planned moving of libpurple to using GObjects internally. This is a project I hope to assist with, and much of the work will likely be done privately in a local monotone database, then pushed periodically into a dedicated branch and merged for Pidgin 3.0.0 when the time is right. Between pushes, however, we have the freedom to break stuff as much as we want, then go and fix it whenever we want without having to worry about breaking things for other developers and users.

As far as plugins go, good for you that you had revived a plugin. Yes, the core crowd is a bit condescending and irritable, but realize the crap that we see in #gaim--all we ask is that people read the damn documentation and the channel topic. However, if you're making an honest development effort, we will assist you if we are able. For the most part, however, Pidgin is extremely well-documented for development, and what documentation lacks, other plugin code can often be used as an example (I have done this more times than I can count in the development of my own plugins). This abundance of documentation and examples means we expect you to do a little work for yourself, which seems to be a problem for the majority of visitors to #gaim.

For the record, I will note that I am a channel regular and have been for over three years. I am not officially affiliated with the project, but I have contributed in the past. I just happen to share some of the opinions of some of the developers and more involved contributors.

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[Timothy Brownawell]

Quote pidgin.im: "Also, we have chosen to go with monotone for our revision control".

That's a clear notice to me that they do not want anyone checking out their source code and having people hack on it.

How so? I see it more as an indication that SVN just doesn't cut it sometimes (why would anyone go to the extreme bother of switching if they didn't have a good reason?).

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[sofar]

one word: git

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[MichaelSmith]

Well I would say hg but the point is that DSCM can be a big help and I wish them well with monotone.

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[SnowZero]

I'm just curious, but why was Monotone chosen over the other distributed version control systems? Something like Darcs might not be able to scale up to a project that size, but Mercurial should work fine. Git is great for large projects, although maybe its Windows support isn't good enough? Just wondering what the reasoning was...

Re:Death do gaim developers publically declared

[rekkanoryo]

I'm not fully briefed on the decision process for monotone. I believe several of the developers felt monotone to be the most intuitive for handling conflicts and merges and such, but I could be mistaken. I know several of the developers, once trying monotone, darcs and one other whose name I can't recall at the moment (perhaps git or mercurial?), preferred monotone for their own use.

Perfect Name

[Terminal Saint]

Looking at the comments so far it would appear the only thing keeping this from being a perfect name is ignorance...

Re:Perfect Name

[numbware]

I agree. Having it be called Gaim was pretty stupid because it didn't only support AIM, but a whole bunch of other protocols. All they have to do now is change the icon from the AIM-ish one to something like a carrier pigeon (guessing that's where they got the name from).

Re:Perfect Name

[ubernostrum]

All they have to do now is change the icon from the AIM-ish one to something like a carrier pigeon (guessing that's where they got the name from).

Nope. In linguistics, a "pidgin" is the sort of simplified hybrid language that evolves when two groups with different languages end up in close contact with each other and need to communicate.

Re:Perfect Name

[dosius]

I don't think it is. A pidgin is a language formed by the coming-together of people who speak different languages - they eventually evolve a common language based on all of them, and it's called a pidgin. (And then when it becomes a natively-spoken language it's called a creole.)

There seems to be some pidginization of English/Japanese in my IRC channel, lol.

-uso.

Re:Perfect Name

[dodongo]

Having it called "gaim" was also pretty stupid because for just a split-second I thought it was a chat program exclusive to gay people.

Re:Perfect Name

[Peter La Casse]

Looking at the comments so far it would appear the only thing keeping this from being a perfect name is ignorance...

Yes, primarily ignorance about which of the millions of results from a google search for "pidgin" refer to this particular program.

That's not a showstopper, but it prevents it from being perfect.

Got to see it coming...

[zanglang]

After all that hoohah with Apple's "pods", Google and whatnot I think most of us have already been wondering at some point why Gaim is still keeping that name, especially since AOL isn't well-known as a conglomerate that plays well with this community... At least Gaim, the name, has had a good long run.

That being said, *Pidgin*? *LibPurple*? That sure sounds... odd. I wished they took up the chance to pick a really good name worthy of one of the best long-time open-source projects around. Now we have to face on onslaught of bird jokes the next time we're sincerely recommending instant messaging software to Linux newcomers. :/

Re:Got to see it coming...

[Planesdragon]

I wished they took up the chance to pick a really good name worthy of one of the best long-time open-source projects around. Now we have to face on onslaught of bird jokes the next time we're sincerely recommending instant messaging software to Linux newcomers.

Anyone who makes a bird joke would also make a "windows" joke. A pidgin is a slightly obscure but extremely well established term, and is PERFECT for an IM system.

I think I might just install it, and I've been pretty IM-adverse for a few years.

Re:Got to see it coming...

[rekkanoryo]

The names actually make sense. A pidgin is basically a mish-mash of languages, which is what we see on IM with all this "u", "o rly?", "omg" and similar crappy "abbreviations" floating around. It also sounds like "pigeon", which is where the new logo will be coming in eventually. Finch was named so to keep in with the bird theme, and I suspect to imply a "little brother" idea since it is young in comparison to Pidgin itself. Libpurple comes from the abbreviation long used for protocol plugins in the client, "prpl", which is supposed to be pronounced "purple." Since libpurple's major function is to provide the IM service handling backend for messaging applications, it made sense that the protocol plugin's abbreviation should have some part in its new name.

Re:Got to see it coming...

[jbo5112]

Thanks for the explanation. Now I don't have to brand the people who came up with the names (espeically libpurple) as stupid, just the names.

Re:Got to see it coming...

[FrankieBaby1986]

Well, as a user of Gaim, I can say that that name is not perfect either: I have had people ask "what's that? gay-aim?"

A much better name!

[emblemparade]

The disgusting legal issues notwithstanding, I have to say I'm very pleased with the change! I really hate all the cryptic acronyms so popular in the free software world. "Gaim," especially, was awkward and ugly. Pronounced like "game", is it? "Pidgin" is a terrific name. It immediately implies what the software does, and rolls nicely off the tongue. I'm also *really* happy with 2beta6 -- it was exactly what I needed to let me leave Windows, where I was dependent on Trillian for far too long. Pidgin supported Unicode correctly, which I needed, and there's a handy plugin that lets me read all my eight years worth of Trillian logs. I'm a very happy Ubuntu user now. As long as I have the stage: I'm sorry that the Pidgin team had to endure AOL's despicable treatment. Big kudos to them for sticking through and listening to their lawyers. I feel like they "took the bullet" for a lot of us who use free software and believe that engineering achievements should be accessible to anyone, period. Y'all deserve a nice big hug for your service and commitment to the free software world.

Re:A much better name!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pidgin" is a terrific name. It immediately implies what the software does

Now I can only assume that you're aiming for funny mod points. "Pidgin" is not in my vocabulary. Not that it's worth anything, but I consider myself to have an "above-average" vocabulary.

Re:A much better name!

[hritcu]

Is there any kind of guarantee that somebody does not get one day a trademark for Pidgin ?

Re:A much better name!

[Moridineas]

I think pidgins a pretty obscure word. I did some linguistics in school, so I my be biased, but I do NOT agree that most people would know what a pidgin is. I would hope a creole would be more known, but even that I have my doubts about...

I saw at least one or two posts here saying that had no idea how to pronounce pidgin even.

Re:A much better name!

[GovCheese]

Pidgin provides process synergy that efficiently dovetails with user driven application and program requirements. The marketplace has shown that stakeholders who can leverage this real-time technology provided by Pidgin will see positive trend improvements that coincide with downstream efficiencies of scale. I dunno. I just had to. In that context, the name Pidgin sounds just dandy.

Re:A much better name!

[Moridineas]

I guess I don't really have any idea what defines an educated person then. You say people who reads book--not airport novels--for pleasure (and what makes a book an airport novel--merely being sold in an airport? that would seem to eliminate a lot of decent literature..). That's a pretty good chunk of people. I guess that rules out people that went to college, etc that don't enjoy reading in their spare time? Again, i think that gets rid of a pretty large chunk of people. I don't have a clue what % of the population would fit in that standard of educated.

So long and short of it, I guess if what you were saying was--the people who live up to your standard of being "educated" know the word "pidgin"--so i guess somehow the act of knowing the word pidgin is part of being educated at this point. :-P

Gratz on learning the word in highschool!

Re:A much better name!

[emblemparade]

Sigh. I guess you're right.

What if they invest some money in trademarking it this time?

Re:A much better name!

[emblemparade]

You two are being silly! It's obviously both a real word and one that's not too known, which is fine as a name. Thing, for example, of Amarok. I didn't know that it was a reference for a mythological wolf until I looked it up. Having to look it up didn't make it less appropriate.

Re:A much better name!

[emblemparade]

Well, I'm willing to soften my "immediately" qualifier. But think of this: does everyone know that Amarok is a mythological wolf? I had to look it up, but once I did, I was, like, cool name, good logo, all is well. My point was that it's nice to name software with words that have relevant meanings, rather than make up something obscure. So, "GIMP" is bad. "Xfce" is bad. But "Beryl" is good (and better than "Compiz"... I'm sure most users don't even understand what compositing has to with the wobbly windows they get).

I guess people will be torn as to whether it sounds nice or not, but I personally like how Pidgin sounds.

Re:A much better name!

[Moridineas]

lol! Good point!

Re:A much better name!

[Cycon]

I saw at least one or two posts here saying that had no idea how to pronounce pidgin even.

I completely thought it was an "open source" play on the word "pidgeon." Like the kind with little notes tied to their feet and sent across long distances.

I for one....

[catbutt]

Thought the name "Gaim" was laim.

For one, it referred disproportionately to AIM.

I prefer pigeon. Kinda cute. Geeky reference to RFC 1149.

Re:I for one....

[catbutt]

(I meant "I prefer pidgen", not "pigeon")

Re:I for one....

[jac89]

If you look on the Gaim (Pidgin) homepage http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ the name originally was 'GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger' as it was originally just used for AIM. Due to a dispute with AOL in this early stage of the projects life it was renamed to Gaim.

Re:I for one....

[jbo5112]

Don't you mean "I prefer pidgin"? *sigh* What good is a name if no one can get it right?

Re:I for one....

[morcego]

That is where marketing people, usually so maligned around here, get into play.
That is a name that would get discarded pretty fast.

And no, I'm not a marketing person. I do, however, have a couple in my payroll, exactly to avoid mistakes like that.

Ok, so they are not a commercial company, and won't loose money because of that. Well and good. But they could loose users. "What was that website again ? www.gaim.com ? www.pidgeon.im ? www.pidgon.im ? Bleh, I'll just use Kopete/Mercury/whatever then".

Re:I for one....

[WeblionX]

Do you let lose the dogs of war when you get your marketing to keep you from loosing money?

Re:I for one....

[pcmanjon]

"What was that website again ? www.gaim.com ? www.pidgeon.im ? www.pidgon.im ? Bleh, I'll just use Kopete/Mercury/whatever then".

I agree with this. I always just remembered gaim.sourceforge.net. Very easy to remember. I've rarely if ever seen a domain use the .im TLD. This makes it hard to remember, the name AND the TLD. It'll be a bitch to keep track of. Hopefully debian packages will credit "Previously gaim" in the description so if I go apt-cache search gaim it'll still show up.

Re:I for one....

[hritcu]

True, only that Gaim was named Gaim years before(!) AIM was named AIM.

Re:I for one....

[It'sYerMam]

Not that I'm disagreeing, but if you indicate the old address out loud, then you'd have had to spell it so they didn't go to game.com or something. This is, nonetheless, worse.

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[Anonymous Coward]

PIGOWNED!

libgaim

[drewness]

Pidgin is GTK+(and GNOME by extension, though I run it on Windows) Actually, a nice thing the Gaim people did late last year is split out the IM backends into libgaim, so while Pidgin will continue to be GTK+ based, they've written an ncurses version called gaim-text, and the Adium people (who used to create their own libgaim) use it as their backend too.

What's wrong with this guys?

[aldo.gs]

Do they think this is some kind of GAIM?

Sad

[Vector7]

It's sad that AOL feels it necessary to harass developers of 3rd party clients. I don't know anyone who would use their service if they had to use the (absolutely terrible) official AIM client.

OTOH, the UI changes in Gaim 2.0 are so uniformly horrible that I'm deperate to find an alternative anyway. Combined with the name change, maybe the whole project will sink away into deserved obscurity. :)

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[be-fan]

A pidgin language is one that's a mixture of other languages, often used in places colonized by other nations or in places were extensive trade makes contact between speakers of two languages common.

Seriously, you didn't know that?

Wait. wait...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

does this mean it'll add, "Yah" at the end of all of my IMs?

Re:Wait. wait...

[level_headed_midwest]

No, Pidgin has an automatic pidgin translator. The first message sent over Pidgin was to lament the AOL lawsuit:

"Dese AOL beyotches, they be hatin on us little guys jus' because they be bigger than we is an think they can push us around an shit. We been in dis here turf first an then they come an try to take id away...that's not coo' man, not coo'. Gotta give a homie his space man, y'all know the rulz..."

Re:Wait. wait...

[dodongo]

You're trying to emulate a creole in your comment, not a pidgin.

Pidgins are languages of necessity, created out of a population of native speakers of two languages in close contact trying to, or being forced to, interact with one another. Over time, if children subsume this pidgin through native language acquisition processes and start speaking it among themselves, it can become a creole, like what you're emulating in your comment above.

Pidgin is a particularly appropriate renaming for this project, because it does take several mutually unintelligible "languages" (i.e., IM protocols) and gives them a common interface through which to work. Really, I think it's a pretty stellar choice for the name.

Re:Good name

[MisterSquid]

Seriously, Gaim was a terrible name. Nothing against homosexuals, but Gaim -> Gay IM?

Your comment betrays antipathy toward homosexuality because you bring it up as a reason for a "terrible name." Regardless of your patronizing "tolerance," the complaint you imagine is meaningless because if you're hearing "Gaim" as "gaym" then should also hear "gamers" as "gaymers." I'm betting dollars to donuts you would never advance the argument that gamers is a "terrible" word, whatever you say about having "Nothing against homosexuals."

I'm a nerd...

[Fortyseven]

...I immediately thought of Voltron instead of a bird. Doh.

Re:I'm a nerd...

[Terminal Saint]

The funny part is there are no birds involved...

"A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages. Pidgins have simplified grammars and few synonyms, serving as auxiliary contact languages. They are learned as second languages rather than natively."

Re:I'm a nerd...

[Fortyseven]

Sure, but you know that's not the first thing to hit most folks minds when they see that name. ;)

Clever, though.

Is this just a name change?

[jonwil]

Or have there been other changes (either forced by AOL or done for other reasons)?

Re:Is this just a name change?

[ConvertEJ__]

From what I read it's just a name change. AOL prevented the development team (kinda) from releasing anything but betas. You can get more information on what's been going on on the main GAIM Sourceforge page.

Careful

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

No, Wikipedia there is giving you a collection of snippets of data of varying value. For example: that article implicitly claims that Haitian Creole developed from a previous pidgin. That's certainly a possibility, but it is far from certain.

Re:Careful

[damiangerous]

. For example: that article implicitly claims that Haitian Creole developed from a previous pidgin. That's certainly a possibility, but it is far from certain.

No, it's not. A creole language is simply a pidgin language that has stood the test of time and become a full, stable first language for a group of people. All creoles were once pidgins by definition. It's a bit nebulous when a pidgin becomes a creole officially, but there's no doubt that that's the progression.

Re:Careful

[Fnordulicious]

There are "creole" languages which did not arise from a pidgin language, however. An example is Michif or Metis which is an amalgam of Plains Cree and French. Another is Mednyj Aleut, which is a mix of Russian and Aleut. To differentiate them from the pidgin-creole continuum they are often called "mixed" languages instead.

The reasons why mixed languages arise are somewhat different from the reasons for the development of creole languages, but the former have been and are still called "creole" in some publications.

Re:Careful

[damiangerous]

There are "creole" languages which did not arise from a pidgin language, however.[...] To differentiate them from the pidgin-creole continuum they are often called "mixed" languages instead.

Sure, but those aren't creoles. Like you said, they're mixed languages. That some people refer to them as creoles is more sloppy terminology than anything else.

Re:Good name

[zippthorne]

But it's pronounced gee-aim.

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[dysfunct]

And am I the only one who pronounced it as "bitchin' IM"?

AOL is as AOL does...

[Azuma Hazuki]

This is yet another reason AOL sucks. Their software sucks, their user support sucks, their users (with a few exceptions) and now their legal department sucks. Seriously, what the hell is the point of doing this, and why do it NOW, after Gaim's been around so long?

I do have to agree with the person who said #gaim is a hellhole though. I came in to ask a question about a segfaulting beta, got asked what distro I was using, replied "Gentoo," and was instantly kickbanned. The reason? "We don't like your kind here." And I'm not one of those ricing idiots who uses insane CFLAGS either. Now if only someone would write a simple GTK-based IM client, I would happily drop Gaim off by the side of the ditch like a hitchhiker with a massive case of BO.

Spork...

[flyingfsck]

Damn, I'll have to fork the project just to give a better name - somewhat like the Centos project...

Re:Thanks Guys

[MasterOfMagic]

(Okay, now that I'm actually not angry, I'll actually write something less obscenity-laden.)

It's a shame that AOL feels that they need to do this. Speaking as a hacker, I know about three people on my buddy list that actually use the stock AIM client, and all of them complain about it. Their ads jumping out and making noise, allowing users to set "buddy sounds" like buddy icons, and their decision to make their official client so resource heavy are reasons that I've heard. Also the fact that they bundled WeatherBug and other spyware in the past. The fact that anybody uses their official client should surprise them.

It is for reasons like this that I made the jump to Jabber a few years ago. While I really like the protocol and like how it works and allows me to communicate how I choose, not in a way that makes the server admins money, very few people know about it, and those that do know about it do not want to leave their current friends behind. gaim was good because if you wanted to use Jabber and AIM and didn't want to have to find an AIM transport that was up more often than down, free, and not snooping on your messages, it allowed you to be on both networks. I know other clients exist, but none are as cross-platform as gaim, and none were as easy to find as gaim. By renaming themselves, they are losing what made them useful to Joe Sixpack - name recognition. If you said to someone "I want to talk to you on AIM, here's GAIM", they could probably figure it out. If you told someone that you wanted to IM them, and told them to open Pidgin, you'll probably get a blank stare, at best.

There are two things that I can really see needed to be fixed. The first is fixing Jabber clients so they are as easy to use as AIM and so they auto-import buddy lists and other settings without having to talk to a single AIM transport which may be out of date, offline, or snooping messages. The second, and much more important, is fixing the legal system so that companies cannot extort smaller competitors by trademarking their name after their competitor came up with one. I can assure you that if the gaim team had tried to trademark AIM before AOL did, they would have been denied.

So does that mean the Qt version is called...

[tepples]

If the GTK+ wrapper around libpurple is called Pidgin, then is the Qt wrapper around libpurple called Kreole?

OMG

[davie]

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,130,000 for pidgin [definition]

Please, for the love of God, if you're going to name a piece of software, use some made-up, bullshit name that doesn't produce over 3-fucking-million hits on google.

Re:OMG

[drdaz]

At least to begin with, try searching for 'pidgin + gaim'.

Re:OMG

[John Meacham]

indeed. this is why I use a FIPS-181 "random" password generator to generate names for my projects and their releases. Sometimes coding is the easy part, coming up with a name is hard. In any case, I would recommend one of the following as a consequence:

• yesoinanu
  
• gocaphy
  
• onjajimoocno
  
• wyediodnufba
  
• hugebneoko
  
• rutcacpodjo
  
• iahairnesita
  
• mishkosu
  
• sesikzay
  
• febquetmojna
  
  

Re:OMG

[GamerCowboy]

Please, for the love of God, if you're going to name a piece of software, use some made-up, bullshit name that doesn't produce over 3-fucking-million hits on google.

I don't see what's wrong with naming one's application something relevant. It's a lot less cryptic than many of the other projects out there and, over time, I'm certain that Google will be displaying Pidgin (formerly known as gaim) on the front page. Office returns over 900 million hits. Hell, even Firefox returns about 180 million hits.

Re:OMG

[Bambi Dee]

Mishkosu isn't so bad :}

The others all get me stuck trying to parse them.

Yes, oi 'n an u!
Go, caphy!
On ja Jimo, oc no?
Wye, diod 'nuf ba?
HUGE bneoko!
Rut. Cacpod, Jo!
I a Hair-Nesita!
Ses I, k'zay?
Feb quet - moj na...

Anyway, better "Pidgin" than some pseudo-scientific fake-Latin flavourless nonword or arbitrary baby talk with a double-o in there somewhere. I like names that actually relate to the product...

Re:OMG

[mkarcher]

Please, for the love of God, if you're going to name a piece of software, use some made-up, bullshit name that doesn't produce over 3-fucking-million hits on google.

Yeah, like "Windows" or "Office" or something...

Do Wii find a problem?

[tepples]

Please let this be a Joke thats a terrible name.

Which Wii article did you copy your comment from?

Re:Thanks Guys

[unchiujar]

Considering this is slashdot I think you misspelled the name. It's spelled Microsoft.

Kreole?

[tepples]

If Pidgin is merged with Kopete, do you get Kreole?

I for one....

[jbo5112]

I think we should start a class action lawsuit against AOL for hampering the development of such fine software and making them change their name from something I liked to something I and my friends don't.

It doesn't seem that AOL would have ever had a legitimate case against GAIM. It would be a big win for open source development to successfully sue a company for harassing them, and show the world that you can't win just because you have money to hire enough lawyers to keep your competition from doing anything useful. Maybe AOL would finally get enough bad press and lose enough money that it would finally die like they needed to long, long ago.

Maybe someone could resurrect gaim as a patch set to rename Pidgin, Finch, and libpurple (what in the world do these name have in common anyway). If I knew more of what I would be doing and had more free time, I would do it myself.

Re:Good name

[Caspian]

For whatever reason, among young American males, "gay" means "bad", much like "sucks" (as in "sucks dick") has passed from offensive slang into quasi-respectable common use to also mean "bad".

I can't think of another case where the name of a demographic group has been made into a common slang term with negative connotations. Some people use "to Jew" as a verb, but that's relatively rare. About the closest I can think of is "to gyp"-- i.e. to swindle like a Gypsy allegedly would.

But neither "to Jew" nor "to Gyp" have even close to the penetration (ha ha-- no pun intended) of the nearly-universal use of "sucks" to mean "bad" and the very common use of "gay" to mean "bad" (or "I didn't like it").

Imagine if people used the word "black" to mean "bad". And not just as in "black-hearted", but as in "Man, that play was so black", or "This pizza is black". Can you imagine the outrage? But nobody seems to care that "gay" is commonly used as an expression of disgust.

This is just another example of the deep-rooted homophobia of modern American culture.

Announcement on Gaim's site.

[antdude]

Read here.

Tell it to AOL

[Erris]

saddening to see such a massive amount of resources and time and energy spent on those issues, rather than everything else that should be done.

Yes, it's sad. That's why I quit giving AOL my money.

The facts laid out by the Gaim developers were:

• GAIM had the name first
• AOL forced them to take the name GAIM because "GTK + AOL Instant Messenger" was too infringing.
• When AOL decided to trademark AIM, GAIM became too infringing
• AOL systematically and repeatedly harassed the developers until they gave up

What a bunch of assholes, but I suppose that's what runs Time Warner. "Ass on Line" sounds like a good name for them.

Lessons learned:

• Trademark your name right away.
• AOL sucks
• "IP" Law sucks, so the first lesson may also be a waste of time.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Tragek]

On the one hand, I'm almost certain (IANAL) that there's a provision in copyright and trademark laws about protection of trademark (Sue or Loose it kind of deal). On the other hand, I think the definition of "infringing" has become a ridiculous farce. What kind of person could honestly say that Gaim and AIM have more than a passing similarity.

I suppose we should have seen it coming when Lindows lost to Windows.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

Well considering the name GAIM was a clear reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, this can't be that surprising. I mean if someone called their product or company GIBM or GMS (or hey, Lindows), you have to expect the other company to at least complain if not actually sue. Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself. And besides, Gaim has gotten away scott-free with using the AOL protocol while other instant messaging clients like Trillian have been sued or blocked.

Well, now that they have this whole thing settled, maybe they can get rid of that memory leak that I've been dealing with lately...

BTW, why the hell were you giving AOL your money in the first place?

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Hal_Porter]

Lessons learned:

• Trademark your name right away.
• AOL sucks
• "IP" Law sucks, so the first lesson may also be a waste of time.

BUT I WOULDNT BE ABLE TO POST ON THE INTERWEB IF IT WAZNT FOR AOL!!!1

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Knuckles]

I suppose we should have seen it coming when Lindows lost to Windows.

Except they didn't

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Lost Engineer]

I used to use DeadAIM on windows and gaim on Linux. Then I downloaded the newest AIM, having gotten a new laptop. One look made me want to puke. I believe it was silver. I downloaded gaim for windows, but AOL cuts me off every hour or so. Deal, as long as I don't have to use their client.

Don't even get me started on MSN/Windows Messenger.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself

I'm sorry but thats not correct.

If you start using a name that is already being used, then YOU are the one causing possible confusion for customers so you are also the one going against the spirit of trademarks.

In other words, it is very important who used a name first.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[ATwentyCharacterName]

Are you sure that it is AOL cutting you off every hour and not some other thing, such as a home router, causing you to get disconnected every hour?

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

"If you start using a name that is already being used, then YOU are the one causing possible confusion for customers so you are also the one going against the spirit of trademarks."

First of all, the acronym AIM wasn't that widely used prior to the AOL Instant Messanger.

Second, most product names out there comes out of words or names that were in use before the product came out. Whether or not that move is a wise one is a completely different debate. But if you then come around with a competing product and intentionally name is something similar to the existing product for the purpose of making your product appear as just a version of the existing one (as the makers of Lindows did), then that violates the spirit of the trademark law designed to ensure products can be made distinctive. Now yes, in the case of Lindows vs Microsoft, MS got in trouble because the term "Windows" had also been used to describe GUI prior to the MS operating system and were forced to buy the trademark back instead of suing (which is why if you were smart enough to continue reading beyond that little section you quoted, you would have read "if not the law itself"). And again, the wisdom of MS choosing that particular name in the first place is an entirely separate debate. But that doesn't change the motivation behind the name 'Lindows'.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

First of all, the acronym AIM wasn't that widely used prior to the AOL Instant Messanger.

As pointed out (with references) by many posts in this discussion, GAIM as a name was in use before AIM.

Hence, This specific use of a name very similar to AIM predates the use of the name AIM.

Or a bit shorter if the above statement is unclear:

AIM was NOT first, GAIM was.

Second, most product names out there comes out of words or names that were in use before the product came out. Whether or not that move is a wise one is a completely different debate. But if you then come around with a competing product and intentionally name is something similar to the existing product for the purpose of making your product appear as just a version of the existing one (as the makers of Lindows did), then that violates the spirit of the trademark law designed to ensure products can be made distinctive.

All nice and well, but as mentioned by many people, GAIM as a name existed before AIM as a name, so the situation you describe did not occur here.

What happened here is this:

Stage 1:

    AOL Instant Messenger was created.

    Someone created an alternative called GTK + AOL Instant Messenger.

    AOL objected, and the peopel behind GTK + AOL Instant Messenger changed their name to GAIM

Stage 2:

    GAIM gets some use and a bit of publicity. It becomes a known alternative for AOL Instant Messenger

    AOL Instant Messenger gets renamed to AIM

    AOL trademarks AIM

    AOL starts harrassing the people behind GAIM

So, it is extremely clear that AIM was NOT the first to use it, and that GAIM did not try to be as similar in name to AIM as possible because AIM simply did not exist as a name at all.

It is also clear that AOL thought the name change smart, and changed the name they use themselves to become very similar.

Because of this, AOL is acting against the spirit of trademark law, tho I bet they are within the letter of trademark law still.

Skipped the rest of your comment because while true, it simply has no relevance for this situation.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[mavenguy]

I AGREEE LOL

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

Again, GAIM was clearly a reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, even if the acronym had not yet caught on for the AOL application. So it clearly violated the spirit of trademark law. Their product name contained a reference to the acronym of an existing competing product, which trademark law is designed to prevent. I am fully aware that the legal world is a different world, so its certainly possible AOL didn't have legal grounding for a lawsuit (IANAL, so I'm not going into that discussion). But the product AOL Instant Messanger predated GAIM, and they named their product to reference the acronym of the of their competition. And for the record, AOL's product was known as AIM well before GAIM was a viable alternative. I remember since I actually used them both back then (AIM on Windows, GAIM on Linux).

And no, legal nitpicking over what exactly was sent to the trademark office aside, AOL Instant Messenger was not renamed to AIM, AIM is just an abbreviation. Look up the word acronym in a dictionary for more information.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

Again, GAIM was clearly a reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, even if the acronym had not yet caught on for the AOL application. So it clearly violated the spirit of trademark law.

Does he acronym GAIM cause any confusion for customers of AOL Intant Messenger?

If not, it is not aginst the spirit of trademark law, to it may be against the letter.

Their product name contained a reference to the acronym of an existing competing product, which trademark law is designed to prevent.

Mo, trademark law is intended to:
1. prevent confusion among customers
2. prevent someone from damaging your brand by using a very similar name.

Since GAIM is not at all similar to AOL, and AOL did not use, let alone trademark AIM when GAIM already existed, there is no confusion possible. The confusion was only introduced by AOL starting to use the acronym AIM and trademarking it.

I am fully aware that the legal world is a different world, so its certainly possible AOL didn't have legal grounding for a lawsuit (IANAL, so I'm not going into that discussion). But the product AOL Instant Messanger predated GAIM, and they named their product to reference the acronym of the of their competition. And for the record, AOL's product was known as AIM well before GAIM was a viable alternative. I remember since I actually used them both back then (AIM on Windows, GAIM on Linux).

This discussion contains tens of references to information disputing that AIM came before GAIM (as a name for the service, or as an acronym for that name. Please come up with something better then your own memory (and for that matter, my own memory also disagrees with your statement, but thats not a good argument for the same reason as why your memory isn't a good argument)

And no, legal nitpicking over what exactly was sent to the trademark office aside, AOL Instant Messenger was not renamed to AIM, AIM is just an abbreviation. Look up the word acronym in a dictionary for more information.

And where I live, AIM is often used as a generic word to denote any kind of instant messenger (nowadays MSN is used even more for this), amd as a result a trademark would fail for reasons of the word having become a generic word, this completely seperate from the issue of if they could enforce such a trademark against someone using a similar name before them.

At any rate, what they sent to the trademark office and when is THE important part here. It is the only thing that determines if they have a trademark at all.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[sitarah]

"Lessons learned:

        * Trademark your name right away.
        * AOL sucks
        * "IP" Law sucks, so the first lesson may also be a waste of time.
"
Unsurprisingly, AOL has been down this path before.

See http://www.techlawjournal.com/courts/aolvatt/Defau lt.htm, which features our favorite judge, Judge Claude Hilton of Vonage injunction fame. Basically, AOL tried to sue AT&T for using the terms Buddy List, You've Got Mail, and IM, and not only did the judge rule that these terms were too generic for AOL to 'own', but actually cancelled AOL's trademark on the term Buddy List and pending trademark on You've Got Mail.

So, AOL does suck, but the law does seem to work fairly in some cases. Conversely, that means that even if GAIM had trademarked their name, it could have been dismissed.. and thus a waste of time as you suggest. GIM would have been fine, though, since "instant message" was deemed generic.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[oopsdude]

saddening to see such a massive amount of resources and time and energy spent on those issues, rather than everything else that should be done.

Yes, it's sad. That's why I quit giving AOL my money.

Congratulations! You have completely missed his point.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[Tragek]

And now I know something new I didn't know before. I honestly thought they had lost (and the name change resulted).

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

" Does he acronym GAIM cause any confusion for customers of AOL Intant Messenger?"

Quite possibly. Most Internet users are not as tech savvy are your typical /. reader.

"Since GAIM is not at all similar to AOL, and AOL did not use, let alone trademark AIM when GAIM already existed, there is no confusion possible."

Again, that is completely false. I don't know how many times I can say this. AOL Instant Messenger is an AOL product that predated gaim, in fact the original name of gaim was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger. Are you denying that fact, or do you still not understand that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger (which must be hard considering how many times I've written it while making the first letters bold)?

"This discussion contains tens of references to information disputing that AIM came before GAIM (as a name for the service, or as an acronym for that name. Please come up with something better then your own memory (and for that matter, my own memory also disagrees with your statement, but thats not a good argument for the same reason as why your memory isn't a good argument)"

I see one reference, from the gaim developers (not the most unbiased source, btw) who are in denial that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger. And looking back through my old emails (most of which have been lost), I see references to aim back in '02 (I see no references, outside of spam, to "AOL Instant Messenger"). Back then gaim was at version .57. That was well before gaim got popular. And I'm certain it was called that back to and almost certainly before '00 when I started using it. Yes, the official name was AOL Instant Messenger, but guess what! If you take the first letter of each word in that lengthy title (no one wants to say all three words, especially when you are typing), you get AIM! Thats called an acronym. They have been around for some time, and were not just recently invented by the gaim developers.

"And where I live, AIM is often used as a generic word to denote any kind of instant messenger (nowadays MSN is used even more for this), amd as a result a trademark would fail for reasons of the word having become a generic word, this completely seperate from the issue of if they could enforce such a trademark against someone using a similar name before them."

Absolutely not. Trademarks don't go away just because your friends are all idiots who don't know that AIM refers to a proprietary system (for the record, I know no one who does that). They only go away if the company who owns the trademark stops enforcing it. Clearly AOL has not stopped enforcing theirs, as evidenced by this story. They don't have to sue each and every person who doesn't know the difference between different instant messaging tools.

" At any rate, what they sent to the trademark office and when is THE important part here. It is the only thing that determines if they have a trademark at all."

First of all, I have stated multiple times that I'm not talking about the legal basis of this, so the official date when the trademark office approves it is irrelevant. Second, when did gaim get their trademark? Oh wait, they never did! So AOL was still first.

Damn you to hell for making me write three posts defending AOL. All because elementary schools stopped teaching kids what acronyms are...

Re:Tell it to AOL

[orangesquid]

"GAIM" was an acronym. "gaim" was not; it was designed to be an arbitrary* sequence of lowercase letters that, if they were uppercase, would have been the project's former name. If you want to argue that because "gaim" resembles "GAIM" and "GAIM" is an acronym that is infringing that "gaim" is also infringing, I only need to define "gaim" as an acronym that isn't infringing. For example, "globally available interactive messager" or something (see, then I don't even say "instant messenger!"), and you could even change how it's written (like "g.a.i.m." or "ga-im" or something) so it bears even less resemblance to AIM. Even if you can trademark "AIM" under the premise that it's an acronym, and you can say that "aim" is infringing if it's "obviously" referring to the same thing or a similar thing, your trademark wouldn't apply to any "AIM" or "aim" that was deliberately spelled out to be a *different* acronym, unless you could prove that it causes significant consumer confusion, and I don't think "AOL Instant Messenger" and "globally-available--interactive-messager" are very close anymore.

* - not quite the right word, but you know what I mean.

I sure hope that the default package install will have symlinks so that things don't break. I know they said there will be a compatibility layer for the plug-in API, but I don't want to have to go around and make a bunch of symlinks every time I install pidgin so that things expecting it to be called "gaim" don't break.

While we're on the topic of the "aim" name, I had a libfaim-based bot called 'aimbot' years ago, and I took it off sourceforge when I got an e-mail saying "cease and desist: AOL says to remove the 3 letters 'aim' from your project name." I keep wanting to fix it up to run again (the protocol changed, so I have to use a newer libfaim, but libfaim's API is very different now, so it would have to be heavily reworked) and re-release it, but I'm not sure what to do about the name. I could maybe just advertise it as "Automated Interactive Machine roBOT" perhaps? I was considering renaming it anyway, because I got a lot of e-mails asking how to set up my "Quake Aim Bot." Evidently, there was some quake bot circulating at the time in a file called aimbot.zip.

Maybe I'll call it "samebot," signifying that it's the same bot that was called "aimbot" ;)

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

Yes, you can certainly argue that they didn't mean it as a reference to aim, but common sense dictates that they did (especially since the old product name was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger). Yes, common sense is not always legally admissible, which (for the hundredth time) is why I am not arguing whether or not they were legally guilty.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[orangesquid]

Gotcha... I can't say whether they were truly guilty of anything, either. Sometimes in the free software world, we find developers caving to corporations' demands thanks to those corporations' well-funded legal departments (thankfully, the EFF can sometimes help fight back when it's cases of just plain bullying), which is very unfortunate. They could have maybe trademarked GAIM from the start (I *think* that's okay under some open source licenses, as long as it's done properly)... I just think it's unfortunate that they gave in to AOL's wishes when they might not have had to.

My understanding of trademark law is that whoever registers a trademark gets to own it, even if someone else was using the name first, with the exception of the original user being very well-known and taking action against the trademark-filer as soon as possible (if they don't fight the party which was granted the trademark immediately, I believe this effectively forfeits their right to do so); after someone trademarks something, they are required to notify anyone else in their market with an identical or nearly-identical name that the name infringes on the trademark. I'm not sure to what extent the trademark owner has to legally pursue other parties with an infringing name. (For example, if Xerox took offense to a photocopier named SIRex ('simply, instantaneous, reproduxion'), is Xerox obligated to file suit, send a C&D letter, or just notify me that they have a trademark for a similar product and that I should tread carefully? If my product advertisements say "SIRex is not affiliated and Xerox, and SIRex machines are not produced by Xerox," would Xerox be okay enough with that?) a useful FAQ from the USPTO and FAQ about filing trademarks

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

Quite possibly. Most Internet users are not as tech savvy are your typical /. reader.

Uh, what does that have to do with anything? Technical understanding of how a messenger works is irrelevant for being confused by the name of a product. GAIM doesn't in any way look like AOL, so to the typical person it is not confusing. It may be confusing to those who actually dig into what GAIM might stand for.

Again, that is completely false. I don't know how many times I can say this. AOL Instant Messenger is an AOL product that predated gaim,

If you'd bother to read a previous reply from me a bit better you'd have seen that I said the same thing.

AOL Instant Messenger predates GAIM, usage of the acronym AIM and the trademark on it do NOT predate GAIM. Read this carefully a few times maybe..

in fact the original name of gaim was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger. Are you denying that fact,

No, I stated the same thing myself. Is it really that difficult to read things?

or do you still not understand that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger (which must be hard considering how many times I've written it while making the first letters bold)?

Sure, and there are lots of acronyms for many products and brands, which doesn't automatically turn them into trademarks or protect them, UNLESS those who made the product actually use and trademark them.

Which part of having to register a trademark for protection didn't you understand?

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

"Uh, what does that have to do with anything? Technical understanding of how a messenger works is irrelevant for being confused by the name of a product."

Stop being dense. I don't mean most Internet users lack the technical information of most /. readers, I mean most Internet users lack the familiarity with Internet technologies that most /. readers have. To them, two programs with similar sounding names could very well be confused.

"AOL Instant Messenger predates GAIM, usage of the acronym AIM and the trademark on it do NOT predate GAIM. Read this carefully a few times maybe..

The usage of the acronym damn well does date back to before gaim. Or do you really think no one (in an age where LOL, WTF, RTFM, IANAL, etc. are all recognized as common words) figured out they could shorten a three word eight syllable and nineteen letter product name to three letters until the gaim people did it?

And for the hundredth fucking time, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE TRADEMARK DATE! I am not talking about their legal basis for a lawsuit, which is where that date would matter. I am looking at it from a common sense point of view. Unfortunately common sense is apparently lacking in certain people these days...

And even if we were talking about the trademark registration date, GAIM WAS NEVER REGISTERED! So AOL would still have come first. So please stop bringing it up, it is irrelevant to what I am discussing and wouldn't help gaim anyways.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

Stop being dense. I don't mean most Internet users lack the technical information of most /. readers, I mean most Internet users lack the familiarity with Internet technologies that most /. readers have. To them, two programs with similar sounding names could very well be confused.

Nice call for not being dense.
GAIM does not sound or look at all like AOL Instant Messenger. It does look and sound a bit like AIM however, which as pointed out many times was not used as such by AOL at the time.

To someone who is not familiar with internet technology this similarity is completely non obvious. It is obvious to you (and me) because we do have that knowledge.


The usage of the acronym damn well does date back to before gaim. Or do you really think no one (in an age where LOL, WTF, RTFM, IANAL, etc. are all recognized as common words) figured out they could shorten a three word eight syllable and nineteen letter product name to three letters until the gaim people did it?


Did AOL do so? if not it is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

And for the hundredth fucking time, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE TRADEMARK DATE! I am not talking about their legal basis for a lawsuit, which is where that date would matter.

Too fucking bad that this is a discussion about the legal side of it. If you didn't want to discuss that then stay out of the discussion.

I am looking at it from a common sense point of view. Unfortunately common sense is apparently lacking in certain people these days...

Ah, common sense is that when posting in a discussion about the name change as a result of legal threats, the legal side of it will be discussed and is a very relevant part of the discussion. Since you lack that bit of common sense I don't think you are in any position to call on common sense here.

And even if we were talking about the trademark registration date, GAIM WAS NEVER REGISTERED! So AOL would still have come first. So please stop bringing it up, it is irrelevant to what I am discussing and wouldn't help gaim anyways.

Common use of a word makes a trademark unenforcable. That is extremely relevant because it means that gaim does not have to be registered in order to weaken or even invalidate the AIM trademark. It seems that this little bit of common sense is also lacking on your side.

In fact all you seem to be saying is that you don't care about the details, don't care about arguments or anything else because AOL is right and anyone arguing otherwise is stupid, lacks common sense and what not.

Oh well, thanks for playing.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[nwbvt]

"too fucking bad that this is a discussion about the legal side of it. If you didn't want to discuss that then stay out of the discussion."

From the post you first responded to:

Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself.

I don't know how much clearer I can make this. I am discussing the SPIRIT of the law, not the law itself. I'll leave that to the lawyers (who, since gaim eventually went along with the name change, probably agree with AOL). I have repeated that statement in virtually every post I've made. If you are too much of an idiot to read the posts you are responding to in the first place, well I really don't have any more time to waste on you.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

From the post you first responded to:

        Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself.

I don't know how much clearer I can make this. I am discussing the SPIRIT of the law, not the law itself. I'll leave that to the lawyers (who, since gaim eventually went along with the name change, probably agree with AOL). I have repeated that statement in virtually every post I've made. If you are too much of an idiot to read the posts you are responding to in the first place, well I really don't have any more time to waste on y

Spirit of the law is to prevent confusion among customers and deluting the value of a brand. It is specifically not preventing similarities or even identical names if such confusion does not occur.

That GAIM complied with a name change might just have to do with the fact that regardless of trademark law, AOL can make part of GAIM non-functional anytime they feel like it, and actually fighting this in court is expensive, a waste of time, and not something a non-profit project can afford easily. It in no way indicates that AOL is right.

Its quite telling that you have to call someone an idiot and some other things because of your own misunderstanding of the spirit as well as the details of trademark law. No, I'm not a lawyer, but my girlfriend is, and for various reasons we dealt with this thing a few times.

Re:Tell it to AOL

[SillyNickName4me]

One thing that needs to be addressed here and that I overlooked in my previous reply..

Absolutely not. Trademarks don't go away just because your friends are all idiots who don't know that AIM refers to a proprietary system (for the record, I know no one who does that). They only go away if the company who owns the trademark stops enforcing it. Clearly AOL has not stopped enforcing theirs, as evidenced by this story. They don't have to sue each and every person who doesn't know the difference between different instant messaging tools.

From http://www.dykaslaw.com/trademark.html#rights

How long do trademark rights last?

* First, the continued validity of a trademark registration is dependent upon actual use of the trademark. In this sense, trademarks are not true property rights in that an express, or circumstantially proven, permanent intention to abandon the trademark is sufficient grounds to cancel a federal trademark registration.

* Trademark rights can also be lost through dilution. Dilution commonly occurs where competitors adopt very similar trademarks and the trademark holder takes no action to defend the mark.

* Another means of losing trademark rights occurs when the trademark becomes so identified with the particular, precise goods to the point where the mark loses its distinctiveness and instead becomes a generic descriptive term. An example most people are familiar with is aspirin, which was originally a trademark (owned by Bayer), but became so identified with acetylsalicylic acid tablets that it eventually turned into a generic term. Other companies are fighting to keep their trademarks from being found generic. These include Xerox ® for photocopiers.

So, there are 3 things that can invalidate a trademark instead of one as you claim.

As you can see, the first item listed is an issue for AOL because of them initially not actually using AIM to indentify their product. That AIM is an acronym of what they did use as their product name does not change that at all. THEY have to ACTIVELY use it.

What they are trying to prevent is item 2 from this list by getting gaim to change its name

What I refered to specifically, and what you seem to think is not true, is item 3 on this list.

Note that any of those 3 on its own is enough to make a trademark no longer enforcable, which means that even if AIM in itself is a valid trademark, there is good reason to assume that at least one and possibly two of those items are true in this case.

From that same FAQ:

# A Common Law Trademark (unregistered)- The first and easiest way to obtain a trademark, and unfortunately the most common way, is to do nothing--just adopt the name and use it in commerce. If it becomes distinctive, either to the business or the product, a common law trademark comes into existence. Generally speaking, common law trademarks are limited to those particular products to which they have become distinctive, in the limited geographic region where the goods or services are marketed. This type of trademark is the most limited, but does give the holder certain rights.

This could mean that gaim is a common law trademark and that aim is infringing on it.

Last but not least, most non technical users have no clue about proprietary systems, don't know that MSN, AIM and what not work differently under the cover. What they do know is that all of them are extremely similar and allow them to chat with others. For many people all of those systems are the same thing just with a different logo/packaging. Those who do know about the differences either have more technical knowledge or informed themselves about this due to having run into the consequences (hey, why can't I talk to blabla@yahoo.com, I have AIM installed )for that matter, more often

Contract

[Reed Solomon]

Did the contract also specify that they use the dumbest possible name instead? Honestly. Shoulda called it Chazwozzer IM.

So what is wrong with Pigeon IM?

[westlake]

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.

All well and good.

But the brave and ever-faithful "carrier" pigeon has been in service for over 800 years - and has done his duty in countless cartoons, war movies, spy thrillers, martial arts epics. He had a memorable cameo in Grim Fandango.

It's the perfect logo for an IM, easily understood, easily pronouced - though just as easily mispelled - one that doesn't need the long-winded explanation that is so typical of open source.

"GEIM"

[erroneus]

They should change the name to something that sounds like the previous name. and just let'm do their worst. GAIM hasn't caused any "damages" and I think they'd be hard pressed to really come up with anything that even sounds good to a judge. Taking out the "A" should be enough.

Re:Thanks Guys

[Nezer]

Yeah, that will show em!

You make some interesting points but... You go off on an obscenity-filled rant that negates your stance to the extreme.

So far you've been modded up a bit but I expect this will drop down. If you had taken a few minutes and actually constructed an intelligent reply without so many expletives I would bet your comment would be modded to +5 insightful, instead it's likely to float between Insightful and Flamebait resulting in neutral karma.

If you really want to make a point, lay off the cursing. It just doesn't work unless, like Dennis Miller, you offset them with really large and obscure words and/or references that makes everything think you're reasonably intelligent instead of just being a whiny a douchebag.

You will catch more flies with honey than you will by calling them "freeloading jerkoffs" wishing they would "die in a fire and of anal rape" in addition to "ass cancer."

Seriously, who modded this crap as insightful?

I'm off to meta-moderate now.

Re:Thanks Guys

[slack_prad]

Doesn't the lead developer work for google? Why didn't google involve in any of this?

Re:For those wondering what IP means in Pidgin

[luckystuff]

Actually, there is a fourth type. It's called 'trade secret.' And most companies are probably more paranoid about these than any other, as these give on the ground competetive advantage. (I think it's easier to steal trade secrets and use them without getting caught than any of the others.) And if you don't believe me, then check out what these guys say: http://www.abanet.org/intelprop/4types.html

The new logo should be...

[istartedi]

...a rat with wings. And yes, dear pedant, I know that pidgin!=pigeon.

Re:The new logo should be...

[StringBlade]

That would be very coo. I'm all a flutter for it!

Carrier Pidgin

[steve426f]

Did anyone else think of carrier pigeons when they saw the name--as in passing messages between people? Apparently the pronunciation is the same.

So what's Pidgin IM Program gonna get shortened to

[advocate_one]

PIMP???

Re:What's a Pidgin?

[Tragek]

Because I am an impressive failure.

Damn. What a goof.

Thanks for pointing it out.

If only I had A) Previewed B) Access to an edit button.

Useless Trash Eating Shit Machine IM

[thedbp]

Pidgin IM? That's the worst thing I've ever seen a piece of software be called. Pidgin. Pronounced like "pigeon?" Pigeons shit on everything, eat anything, will explode if exposed to the right conditions*, are ugly, loud, awkward, and worst of all, ubiquitous in their space. Is that really what they want their software associated with? Why not just called it Useless Trash Eating Shit Machine IM?

*plop, plop, fizz fizz, oh what a surprise it is to find that birds have no built-in way of expelling that much gas all at once. boom.**

**that's a joke, obviously.

Re:Useless Trash Eating Shit Machine IM

[cortana]

Do you feel the same way about doves?

PS, I suggest you buy a fucking dictionary!

Re:Useless Trash Eating Shit Machine IM

[Danzigism]

although I do agree with you completely, I just wanted to point out that pigeons are one of the most diverse species on this planet.. did you know a white Dove is a pigeon? however, the ones in the City's, Feral pigeons, are definitely a cause of pollution and annoyance.. related to the DoDo bird too which is kinda cool.. some of the pigeons out there you wouldn't even think were pigeons.. but regardless, it's a very bad name to have for ol' gaim..

amend that...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Make an innocent-sounding name that condenses down to MILF. It's easy to just change it to keep most of the original phrase.

Re:amend that...

[PHPfanboy]

Why does it need to be a mail app?

MILF would be a great online video editor which would chop up and re-order your FILMs into non-chronological Tarantino-stylee movies.

Re:Well fork them

[zanglang]

Sorry, but stop using Sourceforge and switching a revision control system != Going close source. If you have Monotone installed you can checkout (or whatever the term is in Monotone) the code for 2.0 as well. They're just moving off SourceForge because it has been getting pretty unreliable, and that they've secured their own server. In fact, if you read closely enough it was SourceForge accidentally revealing their mailing list that they decided to announce this decision.

Re:Thanks Guys

[zanglang]

Probably because Gaim itself is more like Sean Egan's hobby/side project, so technically it's in no way affiliated with Google. If Gaim was created as a Google in-house project and stood for "Google Amorphous Instant Messenger" then maybe yeah, but it's not.

RFC 1149

[SocratesJedi]

Will it be compliant with RFC 1149?

Re:RFC 1149

[wild_berry]

Kind sir, I thank you for making this joke.

Re:Thanks Guys

[jimmydevice]

I doubt you'll be modded down for dissing AOL. Anybody who was caught in a strange city for a week or two, needed a temporary dial-up connection and used AOL as a no-cost option knows the pain AOL can inflict when trying to pull the plug.

Heh! Seems you have been modded up +5 insightful.

The new underline feature is bad [OFF TOPIC]

[Anonymous Coward]

[ Aside: I'm posting in this thread because there's no other place to raise this kind of issue. Taco, please give us a place to talk about issues like this. ]

The new change that causes post titles to be underlined is the single ugliest change I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that includes the OMG Ponies style.

Petition: Please, please, please remove the new underlines in post titles.
(Mod this post up or reply if you agree.)

Donating to Pidgin/Gaim

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the Pidgin/Gaim donation policy has been updated as well.

On the old web site they explicitly refused donations (Can I give you money/hardware/other expensive things ... ? No. We're completely fool-hardy and won't accept any gratuities with no strings attached for just being good guys.).

In the same area on the new web site this has disappeared.

So, does Pidgin now accept donations?

Re:Good name

[Achromatic1978]

"Welsh" on a deal.

Now who's showing off their bigotry? ;)

Hint: Look up "welch" in a dictionary. It, not "WelSh", is the one defined as 'to refuse to pay off a lost bet'.

Mods, this is NOT Offtopic!

[hritcu]

Seems that somebody from AOL has mod points today. Parent is not Offtopic in any way.

Adium

[Lost Engineer]

The undisputed kings of textual messaging are SMS and its equivalents outside the US. The rest I'll give you.

Re:Well fork them

[Antique Geekmeister]

Apparently true. Of course, having secret legal negotiations on a forum designed to be so public as Sourceforge systems is like discussing your STD's in an elevator at work. Even if you're alone, the door's likely to open at a bad moment and your boss will hear about that embarassing weekend with his son and the consequences.

Re:Good name

[ickoonite]

Get a better dictionary.

Better name

[Lobais]

I'd probably go for the name GINFA: Gaim Is Not Fucking AIM!

Re:Better name

[burndive]

Shouldn't that be, "GINFA Is Not Fucking AIM"

Re:Well fork them

[SimGuy]

Of course, the secret list was started on SourceForge because it was needed prior to securing a new server. To try to match your analogy, the elevator was set up such that it didn't stop on any unsecured floors. Generally speaking, if you've got the elevator configured to stop only on certain floors, you don't expect the doors to randomly open elsewhere. It was SourceForge's screwup. They did apologize and they helped fix this issue, but the leak was enough to start the rumor mill, and we were just lucky the settlement was finishing up right then, allowing the announcement to be made before things got completely out of hand.

From the Fine Article:

[wild_berry]

Instant Messaging Freedom Corporation

Re:Thanks Guys

[hritcu]

Doesn't Google own 5% of AOL?

memory jog

[CiderJack]

IRC, anyone?

I like the name.

[R-2-RO]

Even though I don't use it anymore (switched to MAC/Adium about a year ago), the new name is SO much better than Gaim, IMO. Great job guys.

Re:Thanks Guys

[xtracto]

And yet parent is off topic, does not say anything and is moded +5 informative?

Didn't you read the post mods? when he asked:

Seriously, who modded this crap as insightful? he was talking about his own post... he would have written "that crap" otherwise :)

All this and.....

[jlk_71]

I love it, all this effort to change the name, yet the downloadable files still have the name "gaim" in them. Personally, if you are going to change the name of your project, then go all the way, don't go half-baked.

Re:Well fork them

[Antique Geekmeister]

That's no reason to do it on sourceforge. Running a private mailing list is a fairly trivial task. And for the authors of GAIM to require a secret mailing list hosted by someone else, in a site famed not for its secrecy but in fact for its openness, is silly indeed. Unless the contributors to the discussion were keeping their names secret and only communicating via Sourceforge aliases, it seems beyond silly and even downright foolish.

Cart before the horse?

[Aladrin]

From the dev website:

Tickets to Be Resolved before Going Public

#3
        Get a webpage
#6
        planet css stuff
#7
        Get a logo
#17
        get legal stuff cleared up with AOL
#19
        Rename libgaim to libpurple
#21
        Rename UI functions into the pidgin_* namespace
#24
        Setup Certificates
#31
        Alert Coverity of the VCS Change
#36
        Trac allows account creation without e-mail or verification
#54
        wierd blist overlay icons

Hmm... Maybe someone got a little overzealous here? Some of these are -not- done, and Slashdot has been made aware. I can't think of anything more 'public' than that.

As for the name... People are talking a lot of how it relates to 'pidgin' language. But 'pigeon', the common 'misconception', is accurate as well. When playing strict role-playing games like MUDs, quite often people want to talk about sending a message outside the game. A very common way to say it is 'I'll send you my pigeon.'

My first thought on the name was 'Oh, that's horrid.' My second was a long string of memories from one of my favorite games, DragonRealms. Maybe it's not such a bad name after all.

Re:Cart before the horse?

[Rysc]

Ahh, DragonRealms! High five!

I used to play that game all the time. Good stuff.

As for Gaim, I've got nothing worthwhile to say. Pidgin isn't a bad name, but libpurple is. What's wrong with libpidgin? I know, it's not tied to the GUI anymore. Big deal. Nobody who is looking for the library Gaim^H^H^H^Hpidgin uses is going to think of "purple."

Hopefully this is the last name change for Gaim. Any name is fine if it is used for long enough.

Re:Good name

[Moridineas]

It's not just American english, and it's not just English...half the languages around the world have terrible insults that are based around homosexuality. I guess you would say that displays t he deep-rooted homophobia of the world? (and I'm thinking here off the top of my head of some of the languages I've had experience with--Spanish, Arabic, Persian)

In any case, a different poster rightfully pointed how off the base you are about there being no other insults / negative words based around ethnicity.

This is just a common feature of languages--people appropriate words for their own usages. Like how in American "queer" is a word now mostly used by the gay community. And how amongst African Americans, the n-word that I prefer not even to write (!) is ok for them, but not for anyone else.

People--teenageers mostly, but everyone, everywhere--notice differences, and they all too frequently define community through differences. Nerds have jocks, jocks have nerds, sex-conscious teenagers have...well, everybody :-P

Mod Parent Up !!!

[rainman_bc]

I loled

That was funnier than the mods have given you credit for...

AOL's next move

[AusIV]

1) AOL objects to a program called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger"
2) The program changed the name to Gaim.
3) AOL trademarks AIM
4) AOL starts complaining about the name Gaim.
5) Gaim changes name to Pidgin.
6) AOL trademarks Pidgeon...

Re:AOL's next move

[infestedsenses]

Google's already got that covered.

Correction

[Outland Traveller]

Jabber is a protocol, not an implementation. It's been replaced by the XMPP protocol.

The current releases of one of the most popular implementations of an XMPP server, "ejabberd" supports a dozen different authentication plugins and mechanisms, many of which store passwords only as hashes. Most likely any large scale implementation will use a database authentication backend.

On top of this, modern XMPP clients (including Gaim/Pidgin/Google Talk) encrypt all their communication by default.

--

It's not as easy to find out how passwords are stored for aim/icq/yim/msm, for which the production sources are not available.

Re:Correction

[Antique Geekmeister]

And the reference implementaion is, let's see. jabberd 1.x and jabberd 2.x, both at www.jabber.org.

And frankly, the clients are irrelevant unless they actively *forbid* the use of the unencrypted protocol, and the clients have no way to prevent the server from using the plain-text password techniques used by default in the reference jabberd implementations. Given such deep security flaws as a matter of default practice, it's not worth pursuing the protocol.

Forcing thw name to .... ??

[TaoPhoenix]

So let me see if I have this -
AOL forced the name to change to Pidgin IM Program ...

PIMP!

Re:fr1st p0st!!

[runexe]

Given the legal issues WRT AOL I don't think this can be blamed on SF.net - which is currently still providing file mirroring service for the project.

Gaim funding

[Rac3r5]

I was just wondering, how is GAIM funded in the first place. All that legal stuff had to be handled by some lawyer who obviously charged a bit of money.

Re:Gaim funding

[javabsp]

Originally out of a developer's own pocket. Later some nice people offered pro-bono support.

Re:Thanks Guys

[MasterOfMagic]

And you apparently think that I care what I'm moderated. Furthermore, you think that AOL is going to read these comments. Honestly, the reason I posted that obscenity filled rant was not to make a point, not to persuade anybody, and not to influence people. It was an emotional release, pure and simple, and when it was posted, that's what people wanted: a pure, emotional release. Hence why I got modded up. Now that cooler heads are prevailing, I'm getting modded down. I'm fine with this and this is right. Notice, however, that after that, once I had cooled off, I posted something with no obscenity trying to spell out what I thought from a rational standpoint.

As far as I'm concerned, the hacker/free software community needs both raw emotion (Theo DeRaadt, Richard Stallman) and reason (Linus Torvals most of the time, Andrew Tridgell), otherwise people think we're all the same - mindless automatons who care only about the code or sweaty stinky geeks that overreact when the pizza toppings are wrong.

In closing, who taught you that obscenity negates someone's argument? Sure, it many not be appropriate in polite company, but since when has how an argument been worded negated its value? Do you think that AOL was requesting was appropriate in polite company? If I choose to go off on an obscenity related rant, it doesn't change the fact that I don't like AOL, that I think they have had too much influence on the Internet, that they've been allowed to do things that smaller companies or individuals wouldn't be allowed to do, and that I hope their business model disintegrates before them and that these points are clear from how the argument is worded.

Re:Gaim team and Adium

[rekkanoryo]

As I have noted elsewhere, I am not a member of the Pidgin development team. I am a regular in the project's IRC channels, and I have contributed in the past, being responsible for the (long overdue) death of a large portion of the serv_* API namespace back in the earlier 2.0.0 development days among other contributions. Yes, I am hostile and standoffish toward Adium, and here's why:

• I dislike its interface, as I have grown very accustomed to Pidgin's interface after having used Gaim/Pidgin since the days of 0.43.
• I dislike the fact that when I try to combine multiple buddies into a "metacontact" in Adium, the buddy I have dragged and dropped becomes the priority buddy in the meta. This is just plain stupid. This is were Pidgin is superior, in that I can choose the buddy's priority in the contact when I create the contact instead of having to go to some stupid info dialog that should have NOTHING to do with the organization of a contact.
• I dislike the fact that the accounts and preferences dialogs are one and the same in Adium.
• I dislike the conversion of "/me does action" to "*does action*".
• I dislike the tabbed conversation windows having their tabs along the bottom and not being able to change said placement.
• And finally, I disagree on a fundamental level with the iTunes integration added to Adium. This is only an incentive for more abuse of status messages to display stupid crap like the currently playing song.

This is the first time I have ever publicly aired my complaints about Adium, and had hoped it would never happen. I will note that there are a few other reasons that I will never discuss with anyone, as a discussion of these issues will only cause more problems than it could ever solve. But, this being slashdot, the land of stupidity and flame wars, I was dragged in by a troll hook, line, and sinker and convinced to air some of my grievances. My only hope is that people are intelligent enough not to take my opinion as being that of any member of the Gaim/Pidgin development team that I am NOT officially affiliated with.

Re:Good name

[be-fan]

Gay is commonly used as a pejorative, and doesn't necessarily have anything at all to do with homosexuals. I'm sorry if homosexuals find the usage offensive, but guess what, nobody really cares. I mean jesus christ, if arabs were as thin-skinned as some groups of people, they'd be crying themselves to sleep every night about their depiction in the media! At least when white people look at a gay guy suspiciously, they're just worried he might pull out his penis for sport, not blow them up...

And now that you mention it, gamers does sound a lot like "gaymer". And after all gaming is pretty gay, I mean what's up with wasting all that time when you could be doing real work?

Do you see how this works here? Calling something "gay" does not necessarily refer to homosexuals. After all, what in the above insult implies that gamers like to have sex with men? Hell, in my book, if you're a practicing gay, at least you're getting some. If you're gamer...

You are mistaken

[MisterSquid]

As I've said elsewhere

The negative meaning of the word "gay" depends on an underlying ideological assumption that homosexuality is negative. In common American English, it hinges upon the stereotype of gay males as effeminate and so "wimpy," "ineffective," "uninspiring," and "frivolous."

Every time someone uses "gay" as a way of dismissing or derogating something, an ideological link between male homosexuality and reprehensibility is exploited and reinforced. This ideological linkage is more obvious when, for example, someone calls an obviously straight male a "fag." That's how most degrading language works. Think about words like "cocksucker," "cunt," "asshole," etc. None of those are literal. They gather their force from deep cultural beliefs about what is good and bad.

Naming something "gay" to indicate it sucks depends, in American English, on cultural homophobia and, in my opinion, is the sign of a shallow mind.

Re:You are mistaken

[be-fan]

Oh please, save me your diatribe about ideological assumptions. I'm completely aware of my ideological assumptions, and hatred of gay people isn't one of them. I dislike many groups of people (rural people, stereotypical young urban black or white males, student activists, old people), but gays aren't one of them. Politically, I'm pro-gay, for the simple reason that they are by and large far more wholesome than the majority of political groups (lawyers, rich people, teachers), etc.

That said, the word "gay" no longer refers exclusively to homosexual people. When someone says that a movie is "gay", does he mean that the movie is "ineffective"? No, gay has come to have its own meaning, independent of its origins.

It's the same as the other words you mentioned. Words like "cunt" and "asshole" might have originally derived their meaning from cultural associations with negative concepts, but they have been used so much that they now derive their meaning from nothing other than their own usage in our culture. When I hear "that movie is gay", do I derive meaning from it because I have a subconscious dislike of gay people, or because I've seen South Park and that's what Cartman always uses to refer to something bad?

Common words derive meaning from their use, not only their origin. Otherwise, people would always have to consider the etymology of a word for anything to make sense! From where does the word "lunch" derive its meaning? I couldn't tell you the origin of the word off the top of my head, but I immediately understand the meaning when I hear it, because I've heard it used to refer to the middle meal of the day for my entire life. That's the neat thing about symbolic communications, symbols don't just refer to other concepts, but are concepts in and of themselves!

Re:You are mistaken

[MisterSquid]

Oh please, save me your diatribe about ideological assumptions. I'm completely aware of my ideological assumptions, and hatred of gay people isn't one of them.

You're missing my very simple point, which is not that you are homophobic but that ideology gives meaning to the language you use. If being gay were on some level not bad in North American culture, "gay" would no longer hold force as pejorative.

Your attempt to decouple the two is absurd. "Gay" as a pejorative reinforces the idea that being a male homosexual is bad. You seem, though, determined to deny what is obvious. I suppose that's your choice. Regarding the idea that "people would always have to consider the etymology of a word for anything to make sense," you might consider Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. Meaning is always transmitted through historical structures in language, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Re:You are mistaken

[be-fan]

Your assertion that historical origins are the only source of meaning in language is ridiculous. You claim that if being gay was not on some level bad in North American (worldwide, actually) culture, "gay" would not be a pejorative. Its true that "gay" would not have become a pejorative without the negative attitudes towards homosexuals, but at this point, "gay" could continue as a pejorative even if all negative feelings towards homosexuals had disappeared. The word itself has meaning beyond its origins.

Consider a word like "fuck". What is the origin of the word "fuck"? Wikipedia suggests that the precise entomology of the word isn't even clear, meaning the original historical structures to which it refers has essentially been lost. Yet, its meaning is perfectly clear to an English-speaking person. Words continue to have meaning even when their historical context has been forgotten! They are independent entities. They have connotations, yes, but they are not defined by their connotations.

Re:You are mistaken

[The One and Only]

If being gay were on some level not bad in North American culture, "gay" would no longer hold force as pejorative.

And if being a Gypsy was on some level not bad in North American culture, we would no longer complain oof being "gypped" when we got ripped off. Hey, wait a minute!

GAI-M

[bill_mcgonigle]

Pronounced like "game", is it? "Pidgin" is a terrific name.

Yeah, except for the sudden decrease in support from the GAI community.

Re:GAI-M

[emblemparade]

...and yet an inundation of support from the National Pigeon Association!

(yes, there is such a thing)

Trademarks

[bozwell]

The main thing I got from reading this was a reminder to register your trademarks, haha. If they were actually using GAIM before AIM was used, then they would have been in good shape had they just registered their mark. Registration for trademarks is relatively cheap and easy, compared to something like patents, so there's not really any excuse for them not to have done it. Let's just hope they remember to register their trademark this time. =P

"Similar" is enough

[DrYak]

Yup. The infringing name must only "sound close enough" to be at risk at "generating confusion", when both names are used for similar products.

AIM and GAIM sound similar and are written similar, and both are used to name products that are software connecting to internet messenging networks including, in both case, the AOL/ICQ protocol. And both include "Windows" as a targeted platform.
Technically, it would be exactly like the Coke company suing another company making another cafeine-based drink named "Cawk" (too much sounding a-like name for similar products), except the the cawk-make make up this name long before "coca-cola" was shortened to "coke".

In fact, the french publisher that publishes the comic books "Asterix & Obelix" got a case against Mobilix (now TuxMobile) because the name was sounding too much like all their gauls characters with name ending in "-ix". So in our case 1 single letter isn't that much incredible.

Domain Name

[schmiddy]

One other gripe I have about the new name is that they've chosen the domain name "Pidgin.im". While cute, I really don't think it's appropriate for them to be using the .im ccTLD, which is supposed to be for sites pertaining to or located in the Isle of Mann. Yes, Yes, I know it's cute and all to use .im for the site of a free IM program (just like all the spammy sites using .fm or .tv), and it looks like pidgin.com has already been parked by some sleazebags, but this is really just diluting the whole purpose of having ccTLD's in the first place, as well as making it harder for programmers/people/search engines to deduce the purpose of a site from its ccTLD. Oh well..

If I were more cynical, of course, I'd suggest that ICANN created all these different ccTLDs knowing full well that they wouldn't be used appropriately, but already hooked on the hundreds of millions of dollars in domain registration fees they're getting.

Obligatory XKCD Reference

[Sentry21]

Perspective