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Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork
paleshadows writes "Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol
instant messaging client, has been forked. This is the result of a heated, emotional, and
very interesting debate over a controversial new feature: As of
version 2.4, the ability to manually resize the text input area has
been removed; instead, it automatically resizes depending on how much
is typed. It turns out that this feature, along with the uncompromising
unwillingness of the developers to provide an option to turn it off,
annoys the bejesus of very many users.
One
comment made by a Professor that teaches "Collaboration in an Open
Source World" argued that 'It's easy to see why open source developers could develop dogmas. [...]
The most dangerous dogma is the one exhibited
here: the God feature. "One technological solution can meet
every possible user-desired variation of a feature." [...]
You [the developers] are ignoring the fan base with a dedication to your convictions
that is alarmingly evident to even the most unobservant of followers,
and as such, you are demonstrating that you no longer deserve to be in
the position of servicing the needs of your user base.'" Does anyone besides me find this utterly ridiculous?
This wouldn't be the first time the pidgeon folk have decided to change the interface and refused to let people keep things the way they liked. Forks have been threatened before over their decision to hide protocol icons as well. I'm glad they separated the gui from the rest of the program - both this and the protocol icon decision really bug me.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
For anyone interested, the fork is called "Funpidgin" and can be found here.
The summary makes light of it, but the Funpidgin page explains that their intention is to respond more directly to the requests of the user community. In addition to the feature mentioned in the summary, Funpidgin has implemented some others, and will presumably continue adding user-requested features (while still integrating upgrades from the pidgin codebase, presumably).
Forks are both good and bad; this one is no exception. On the one hand it "wastes effort" and can duplicate work. On the other hand, it can give the user community (which isn't homogeneous) the product(s) they want. It can encourage useful competition. Often the end result will be better than if no fork had occurred. Another example is the Compiz/Beryl fork, which created some duplication for awhile, but ultimately turned out for the best since the merged Compiz Fusion includes the best features from both (a stable core and all the whiz-bang features users wanted, in the form of plugins).
If both the Pidgin and Funpidgin developers work to provide something that their respective users find worthwhile, then what's the problem?
Considering my general hatred of the Pidgin UI, no, I don't find this ridiculous.
Let's start with Pidgin's UI Sucks, which details some of the weird UI decisions made back around version 2.1. Fortunately they've fixed almost all the issues listed in that post.
More Pidgin Bashing is just a bug, so let's skip ahead to Pidgin's Crappy Formatting Icons which they have not fixed.
If I ever had the time to, I'd like to write a new UI for libpurple, Pidgin's backend. I have some ideas - but not enough time to actually learn how to use libpurple.
Maybe I can help with this fork, called... uh. Hm. The summary doesn't appear to mention it.
Ah, here we go: funpidgin.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Ya know, I can't blame the community for this fork. The gaim/pidgin developers have had a bad history of 'God complex'. Hell, just recently they refused to make any changes to the way Pidgin handles SASL authentication to XMPP servers due to a change in the 2.4 codebase that completely breaks SSL encryption to the OpenFire XMPP server, whereas the 2.3 codebase AND every other XMPP client seems to not have any issues. Their response was something along the lines of "yeah, well we're doing it right..every other client is doing it wrong". I find that hard to believe. This ultimately leaves me with 2 options: either don't upgrade past version 2.3 of Pidgin, or use another client. And yes, not being able to resize the input text box drives me absolutely crazy. I look forward to a forked version addressing this and the XMPP SASL authentication issues.
rather:
No slashdot thread is complete without at least one (1) Microsoft bash.
Corollary: As it adds to the completeness of the thread, it will be modded informative.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
There is a plugin available that does just that, but the Pidgin developers don't want to include it as a default plugin. Partly because they don't want to clutter the plugin list, and party because they wish to force users to get used to their auto-resize input area.
Alrighty then.
*ahem* Microsoft SUCK0RZ!!!1111ONE
There. Mission Accomplished!
I can only assume you don't do much graphical UI development. "Widget" is a standard technical term used to refer to an element of a GUI. See for instance GUI Widget on Wikipedia.
The Safari text boxes are compound widgets (or metawidgets, if you like), which include a "resize handle" widget in their corner.
DNA just wants to be free...