Four Words for Funpidgin (Updated w/ comments)
I’ve been meaning to comment about this, and was reminded by today’s Coding Horror.
Funpidgin, a fork of the popular Pidgin Instant Message client, was created when Pidgin developers had diverging opinions on how the input box of the chat window should resize by default. According to the Funpidgin website, What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you. Unlike the Pidgin developers, we believe the user should have the final say in what goes into the program.
Four words I have to say to Funpidgin: Users Are Not Designers.
This attitude takes participatory design to all-new (and very dangerous) level. You go from user-centered design: keeping users in mind while designing a product, to user-directed design: catering to every users’ whim without consideration of the consequences (at least, users who know how to use mailing lists and bug trackers, who are not representative of a broad user audience for an instant messenger client).
What you end up getting is this:
Good luck guys.
– Updated 2008-05-17 00:30 –
Besides all the things I obviously never said nor remotely hint to, between the lines or not, it seems like pantsgolem is the only one who Got It. This isn’t about the [Fun]Pidgin product or the decision to fork, or the design decisions the projects made concerning the text widget. It is about the fundamentally flawed development process Funpidgin has adopted in the name of usability and design and their ignorance (or ignore-ance if they just choose to ignore it) of this decisions implication to the project.
When a project declares that users will have the final say in functional requirements, it is on its way down a slippery slope. Sure, there may be some good examples where a problem was easily solved and a user had a good idea, but what about all the ideas that are obviously a bad design decision? What happens when you have users who have conflicting opinions? Or users who have no knowledge of other users, cases, and scenarios beyond themselves? This is why users are not designers. Even if the real designers are users of a product, they are trained to be objective. They don’t replace the user with themself, but they are empathetic towards the user.
Also, what about the developers? Don’t they want retain the right to create and preserve a certain kind of experience? What if the project wants to focus on a specific user type, but a minor user type requests a feature that will disrupt that group? What happens when developers start to ignore certain ideas and only take the ones they like? Aren’t they acting as the designer and preventing the user from playing designer?
By adopting this mission statement, Funpidgin has set itself up to make some possibly fundamentally poor design decisions. I don’t care about the project itself or the design decisions they’ve made. What I do care about is that the rest of the open source community learn something from it so we don’t repeat these mistakes.
Of course I want to see users participating in open source projects and providing their feedback, that is the basic principle of participatory design. Of course I want to see developers thinking of users besides themselves, that is the basic principle of user-centered design. What I don’t want to see is development driven by users who don’t understand the problem they are experiencing or know who else they will be effecting with their change. We don’t have developers who fully understand how different users of their software might effect each other, and yet we expect users think beyond themselves and do this?
User feedback is important. Open source celebrates the fact that users can take an active part in the community by reporting bugs and driving the development of features through requests. But users are just an indicator of how well we are doing. We want their feedback, but we also want to do what’s best for them.
seele :: May.17.2008 :: Design, General, Open Source :: 50 Comments »
I don’t quite agree, you might have been a little too extremist. Being a developer, I think we have to listen to the people who are going to use the software we develop. If there is something that won’t work, we just need to explain it to them why it won’t.
I’d disagree. If developers never listened to users then linux wouldn’t be where it is right now. In fact nothing would be where it’s at right now. You seem to expect 2 things which I think are very clearly not true.
One, You think that developers of this program will listen to every request made, Which is funny, cause that never happens. What they are clearly saying is that they want to create features that users want, not that the development team deems worthy. In fact Office 2007 used this same idea (although to a much smaller group in a controlled environment)
You assume that any users will just join mailing list and bug report systems and use them. This is a new low for someone who is in the field, As you should know that asking people to do that is going to be a real pain. Most normal users will never do this, but they will learn how to post on a forum, or post about it in a blog, which is where MS did a lot of research for the office interface.
I’d also like to add that assuming all users have the intelligence of Homer Simpson is insulting, even if you were joking.
You’re wrong.
In this case, the “designers” dont necessarily know what they’re doing any more than the rest of the userbase. Ergo, letting the users actually have a say in what they want in their software might actually improve it instead of just catering to Developer XYZ’s tastes.
That may be true, but who _wouldn’t_ want a separate bubble dome for the kids?!??!?!? ;)
So, what, because a user-base isn’t considered “broad” enough to show up on your personal radar, then a group of people who agree with those users themselves can’t create a fork of a project in order to make it fit their needs? The creation of Funpigin is not going to somehow take anything away from Pigin aside from users who ALREADY dislike it, and are only hanging on because it’s been better than the other ones that they dislike more. It’s not as if there’s some kind of finite amount of open-source software that can exist in the world, and somehow because some people are creating software that YOU don’t like the interface of, it’s going to somehow deprive you of your favorite projects. Also, since when do ALL projects in the world have to cater to slobbering morons? Can’t we have software designed for intelligent people anymore?
Personally, I hate basically every single design decision that you have. I really do–I find them next to unusable at best, and completely backwards and ugly at worst–but I’m not telling you to somehow STOP offering your advice. You’re working on the projects that you want to, and the Pidgin developers are working on the projects that THEY want to, and the Funpidgin developers are working on the project that THEY want to, and the users are going to have a nice, wide range of software to choose from, with radically different design interfaces to fit a broad spectrum of personalities. How is choice somehow a bad thing?
(Also, I’m sorry, but unless you also program, then you yourself ARE A USER, and therefor insulting the design decisions of other users is highly hypocritical. You might want to consider getting off your high horse of assuming that you know what’s best for everyone, when clearly many people, even if they aren’t the “target audience”, disagree with you.)
All that the “FunPidginers” originally wanted was a check box in “Preferences,” and considering how much space is not used in the “Interface” section, would it really have been a problem to implement it? It isn’t, and that’s why people are mad. Open Source is built around the idea that anyone can view and modify code, which is probably how the Pidgin coders got to that position in the first place. I cannot stress this enough: users are the developers in open source, or open source loses most of its point. If FOSS stands for choice, it does not inspire confidence that the Pidgin developers are not willing to add an option. Besides, forking the project could be a good thing, considering the massive changes Pidgin has undergone since Gaim 1.5. Personally, I dislike that the newest Pidgin takes up 30-40mb of ram, whereas Gaim used under 10mb on average. My point is who is to say the Pidgin developers have the right idea? Since memory footprint was my original reason for coming to gaim (and the lack of advertisements, but a quick hex edit removes those from any AOL AIM program), they certainly don’t have the right idea in my opinion.
On another point, a significant default interface change on the largest IM client could hurt Linux’s adoption. I have been using Gaim/Pidgin for seven of its nine year history, and when I updated to the new style, I thought something was wrong and tried to drag the font options bar upwards, and when that didn’t work, I began googling for an answer. I hate to think what a less technical user would think. Of course, this is not as big a deal as if something like Open Office changed its interface in a way that Microsoft Office converts could not intuitively grasp, but it is not insignificant, either.
Things seele did NOT say in this post:
- Funpidgin users and/or developers are stupid.
- Funpidgin will fail.
- User input is worthless.
- The Pidgin developers’ decision on the text box was good.
- The Pidgin developers’ decision on the text box was bad.
- The Pidgin developers are your gods, and you should all give them hugs and candy.
What she DID say:
- The aforementioned design philosophy is fundamentally flawed.
- The Funpidgin developers will have a difficult time overcoming this obstacle.
My personal thoughts on Funpidgin are that the Pidgin devs probably overreacted a little, but that’s par for the course in the open source community. And to be perfectly fair, they were getting flooded with plenty of (undeserved) hate mail at the time. The sensible thing to do would be for people who have practical concerns with Pidgin’s design to work with the developers to overcome them, not shriek “CHANGE IT BACK, CHANGE IT BACK” or whine about making it a preference.
Read the feature log, and you see even those who refuse to change it: “The point is, we should find a better solution that works both ways, instead of “making it an option” (see: http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/4986 03/04/2008 11:07:07 AM changed by hbons). Implicit in your argument is the assumption the developers are right, but they won’t even say that.
From what I read in the enhancement ticket, the developers are trying to make Pidgin perform as an “IM client” as they see it. I will not be surprised if they make the + ability (it adds extra lines) not cover over the entire message history, leaving the last message on the screen. That follows their philosophy of what an IM client should do (and at the sacrifice of choice).
@pantsgolem The argument was posed two ways, to change it back as you mention, or to make it into an option in Pidgin’s preferences. It was refusal of the latter, not the former, that drove for a fork
Now and then I read your blog, and while I’m indifferent to most nitty-gritty HIG entries, some interest me. But this one is really not your quality or style. You did something wrong here. As many other comments say, nobody said the users should be granted every single wish, and so the comparison to Homer Simpson is highly unjustified, but when a large number of users consistently demand something and the developers don’t listen to it *without providing a reason*, the fault is on the part of the developers.
The OSS community is composed of both developer-users and non-developer-users. Both must cooperate with each other. If some developer-users don’t listen to the non-developer users, then the logical continuation is a fork and what tenable argument do you have against that? Sorry, but you got the wrong on this one.
P.S: I don’t use either Pidgin or Funpidgin. I use Kopete/Konversation when at all I need them. But I object to your words on principle.
I’ll start by saying I know of the fork, and why, but I don’t know what the forks plans are or anything other than the information contained within the blog post.
I really don’t think it will be as bad as you make it.
Its not as if just because one person wants feature x, then feature x will be automatically implemented. I wondering if there will some type of process by which the community can decide whether the feature is implemented or not.
And I really don’t think that they are just going to let anything into the program. Perhaps they will set some guidelines.
Like anything not directly involved with the users communications must be a plugin.
So when JoeUser says “I want a pong game in Pidgin”, maybe they vote on it, and then create an official [fun]pidgin pong plugin.
Or maybe what they really mean is that they plan to listen to the users more then the original pidgin did. They obviously didn’t, I for one DO want a regular resizeable textbox. And its not like its an unreasonable request. It SHOULD be an option considering the fact that is the way it once designed.
You are wrong about this particular case. Devs of pidgin changed the default behavior of the program, _LOTS_ of users didn’t like that behavior and asked to make this behavior changeable via checkbox. The devs answered that they don’t really care of what users need or ask for. The thing is that they are asking for any user suggestions and opinions on their website. So first they ask you about what you think is wrong with their program and when you say your opinion to them and even provide the patches, the only answer you get is “go away n00b, your opinion is nothing for us”. That’s what caused funpidgin to appear, but not the inputbox itself.
thanks for saying it out loud for the rest of us. it’s amazing how people are not getting what you’re writing - even though, after years as a developer in an open source project, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore (both at developers and users).
I’d go on a limb and even add: most developers are not designers. they don’t have the training to do that. I’ve worked with designers, and while some of their ideas were completely on crack :-) and I had to keep them with at least one foot partially on the ground while creating the UI interactions, the end result was at least a hundred times better than what I would have done - or worse, what my users would have suggested.
the problem with F/L/OSS software is that not many designers are willing to partecipate - and that is a huge pity.
I wholeheartedly agree with Celeste Lyn Paul.
I think some developers need to realize that, while it’s very important to take user’s suggestions to heart and consider them, you can’t please everyone and in the end it’s the developer who makes the final decision about what will improve the software as a whole.
Take a stand on the code you write.
And 4 words for you:
Don’t use car analogies.
It is fun, it is easy but now we’re talking ’bout going ‘down a slippery slope’.
Example from the devil’s advocate: “But if the users want Pidgin to look like Homer’s car, what’s wrong with that? What *really* happended was that the devs changed the manual seat adjustment and made it into an automatic seat adjustment depending on how hard you floor the brake pedal. We want our seat adjustment back!”
Leave the car analogies to Slashdot.
one good thing I can see coming from this is maybe libpurple or libfunpurple or whatever it’ll be called might finally get “new” features inplemented such as personal messages for MSN. libpurple has been really slow to add any MSN or other popular protocol features that the offical clients have had for years. Even if the fork eventually dies or gets remerged, I think it will boost the amount of good useful features in FunPidgin and/or Pidgin.
Many said the stuff that I wanted to say that funpidgin is a GOOD thing, I`ll just summarize it:
1) what`s the problem with a fork? this is open source right? we have hundreds of linux distributions, but you don`t complain about that
2) there is an illness in the GNOME community, here is a familiar story:
“Till Kamppeter, a developer for Mandriva, innocently asked for help on the GNOME usability list on how to make GNOME printing options reflect a given’s printer full range of functionality.
Kamppeter is a printing and imaging expert who was one of the people who went to the recent OSDL Desktop Summit to help figure out how to make the Linux desktop a lot more successful than it is currently.
Frederic Crozat, a GNOME packager/maintainer at Mandriva, replied, according to Kamppeter, that, “the usability team of GNOME was against listing (the full printer’s) options (because) they clutter the dialog and can be more confusing than useful to the user.”"
Torvalds then chimed in:
“I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
This “users are idiots, and are confused by functionality” mentality of
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do.
Please, just tell people to use KDE.
Linus”
Source: http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=linus+use+kde&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
If you do a little googling you can find out more, why was Linus so upset. Don`t be suprised if you found out that he had a similar problem, that any ‘mortal’ would have had.
And by the way check out this before preaching: http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net/content/features
I personally like the idea of funpidgin, even if it will fail in the future who are we to critisize the developers? as I said before, this is open source buisness, this is why you can get the source, modify it and recompile it to fid your needs if you don`t agree with it`s developers.
So next time please don`t insult a project just because you think it`s wrong.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Isnt that the problem of OpenSource/Linux in general?
Isnt that exactly why people like OSX? Isnt that why Ubuntu is the most liked linux distribution of them all?
People are stupid, dont execute every feature request they give you.
And as an aside: Why isnt this just a pidgin-plugin? I dont get it. Or care.
I fully agrea with you and beleve it or not I alwwys think that that episode wen Homer created his custum car explained it extremly well.
Its not that Homer is stupid, he loved the car he made, but it is his car, and it was a flop has a product. I think we should all realise that we have a litle Homer inside us (allways thought that was the key element of Homer), so wen we create software we should make the correct balence betwin the Homer inside each user, and the global look that pleases the most people possible.
What about tablet PC users?
Users, aren’t designers, and developers aren’t promotion managers (see Launchpad’s winning logo).
But seeing as Pidgin coined the term FSUES (http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/FSUES), you get the point that they’re simply people who are screwing everyone over by making a great client that a lot of distros ship, but really, they’re doing it for themselves and nobody else. So if they decide in the next version that Finch is really the way of the future, everyone is screwed even more! Yay.
PS. They’re also stubbornly refusing to implement audio/video, as well as the advanced features that IM protocols support (custom smileys, drawing, etc). Since you’re a KDE user though I doubt you really understand all of the problems that pidgin has.
Users are there to generate requirements, it is up to designers and developers to decide if the user is of their rocker or not. Users cannot be the final arbiter of what makes software work.
A product I work on has a lot of input from our user-base. We still weigh and consider and prioritize and refine their requests to fit the whole user base, and not just one client. The client is not the final arbiter of features. That would be stupid.
The problem is, Pidgin are ignoring ALL constructive user comments and patches.
For example, there has been a patch to enable MSN video support sitting in pidgin’s bugtracker for 9+ months. Without review.
If thats not a broken Open Source method, nothing is.
The funpidgin people never said anywhere they would let users DESIGN their product! Dunno where you got that from.
They only said you get final say in the process… and guess what the same happens when you buy a car or a house! _I_ get to decide what kitchen to put in and what tiles to use for the bathroom and and I’m not going to let anybody tell me I can’t combine pink, red and blue
But at the same time _I_ didn’t design the microwave or the refrigerator so I know they will work correctly and safely and that is in the end all that I want.
It also the main reason I prefer KDE over Gnome! Give me my racing stripes, my hub caps, my spoilers, it’s my car, let me decide what and how I want it. If not we would still all be driving Ford Model-Ts!!! (And even though I can customize my car the way I want to it STILL WORKS perfectly to get me from A to B, so the basic functionality hasn’t been compromised)
I agree with Quintesse. Fundpidgin developers aren’t saying they will let users design a new client, only that they will decide which features go in based on user input.
You’re twisting that into “They’ll embed
a multimedia player in the client just because one user asked for it”. The real difference is how much will they factor user input into their design decisions. Also, nowhere do they say that they’re just going to listen to people using bug trackers and mailing lists. They could just as well conduct proper user research to find out “what users want”.
[start rant]
Now, if you think it’s the designer’s job to choose which features go in, then I strongly disagree with that. Designers are supposed to get input, conduct research and provide a creative solution to certain problems. UI designers: decisions on the interface, engineering designers: decisions on how to structure the code. But there are no “feature designers”, features always come from someone else: users (preferably), management, etc.
In fact, most software development methodologies start with a set of user requirements (that may change over time) and the idea is to develop something that satisfies those requirements. So like it or not, development _is_ driven by users because otherwise, what would be the point of writing code in the first place. (Of course, that user could very well be the person who wrote the code himself.)
[end rant]
(Thank you for allowing anonymous posts. I hate having to sign up whenever I try to post a comment in a blog, and usually end up not posting at all.)
I don’t agree. This attitude is with some projects where developers decide how they want something.
That is fine, but then they should not claim that they care about users.
Because they do not.
I guess the worst part of the Funpidgin fork is the name. _Fun_Pidgin, hello?
I’m a bit worried by the fact that the best ideas for making the interface better is adding a couple of preferences instead of trying to solve some actual problems for people using the application.
On the other hand, it seems to be a divide between the “Sane defaults” and “I should be able to tweak everything in my application” and having the second camp off Pidgin development might be a good thing as the first camp can then focus on creating a well working application for people who just want to talk to their friends instead of making everything suck for everyone by default “as people can set that later in the preferences anyway”.
This name does suck. Then again, people who only say theory and do no work aren’t overly helpful either. Of course, the users don’t know what’s best for themselves. But hello, there’s a line between that and what they *really* want, and you being an ass about it and saying “we made this product you *us*, not you. gtfo or maek patch”.
You update your post and now you sound even worst. You act like they have already failed, Um as far as I can tell this project is still going strong.
You also again say that users aren’t developers and that they will request dumb features or something that shouldn’t be put into the app. Well duh, If someone says hey lets make the IM chat window fill the whole screen do you think a developer is going to say “thats an amazing idea” No, he’s going to ask why they should do that and he’s going to get user feedback on it. Again you can’t always please everyone, but you can please the majority, something pidgin has failed to do for some time now. From what I see, You think that developers are dictators that run the software and have people (like you) do research and take months to find out what could simply be solved in a forum post. It’s the wave of the future as it’s much more efficient. What this fork is doing is givin power to the users to figure out what features they most want, and then the developers act on it. Personally I think it’s a great idea, Your not only encouraging users to help make the program better, but you get a community uproar (like this) of people who support the project.
BTW, you keep saying that users have the intelligence of Homer Simpson. I want to know what kind of classes you took and how your parents raised you, I can assure you that if I treated my customers (users) like they were all idiots I would not have a job anymore. Users aren’t dumb, they just need guidance. If I were to throw you in a 200 M.P.H stock car and told you to win the race, You would most likely fail at the first turn. But if I taught you how to use that car and how to race, you might have a chance. Try to keep that in mind.
“Users are not Designers” is apparently the full
extent of your argument. This is a logical fallacy
called “Appeal to Authority” (or one of its variants).
Google “Fallacious Arguments”.
Specialists in any field can be as wrong as any
generalists. I am not saying you are mistaken.
I am only saying that you need to find another
basis for your argument.
In reality it was all about change resistance and about the hardness of unlearning a bad habit (the resizeability, or the actual need to resize constantly)… The trunk pidgin does the job pervasively, and has higher usability.
KDE has plenty of options, contrasting to Gnome. If you want options, use KDE and Kopete etc etc
Kopete is Homer’s car.
Gnome is a Lada.
KDE has plenty of options, contrasting to Gnome. If you want options, use KDE and Kopete etc etc
Kopete is Homer’s car.
Pidgin is a Lada.
Funpidgin is inbetween.
KDE has plenty of options, contrasting to Gnome. If you want options, use KDE and Kopete etc etc
Kopete is Homer’s car.
Pidgin is a Lada.
Funpidgin is inbetween.
You choose.
Myself being a telecom software tester, I can say most *programmers* aren’t *designers*, either. It takes a person who is very perceptive in usability and the end user experience to make good design decisions. Sometimes the ones coding don’t do a good job of looking through the user’s eyes. Often, the most talented programmer only understands how he uses an application; rare are the ones that can understand the different ways many different people would use it.
Four simple words: “developers don’t understand users”.
(Me, personally, I don’t like the size/shape of my application windows to change without my interaction…)
I’m a user.
i cannot code.
I cannot design.
I cannot document.
I cannot construct a website.
I cannot create application artwork.
I can only learn how to use what others have generously constructed.
And I can only hope that my feedback is taken graciously and with dignity.
[quote]Four words I have to say to Funpidgin: Users Are Not Designers.[/quote]
Seems to be the general response on the planet. Yet, the real problem in this case, seems to be that the pidgin coders are not very good designers. Yet, they don’t leave people room to change it.
There user base is large, but not very satisfied. And it has been this way for a long time. Something had to give…
“We want their feedback, but we also want to do what’s best for them.”
I would rephrase that as
“We want users feedback, but we also want to do what’s best for the software.”
Otherwise, I agree with you…
I agree wholeheartedly. I can say that almost all the people who disagree with you are completely missing your point.
Their promise:
“Unlike the Pidgin developers, we believe the user should have the final say in what goes into the program.”
Is, as you put it, a slippery slope. Pidgin has so many users that it is not only impossible, but ridiculous to spew such blatant crap. To top the matter off, one of the primary rules of good design is that users do not know what they want.
Frankly, 90% of users requests are utter stupidity and if all were implemented, people would be yelling at you to remove half of them, questioning your intelligence and tossing in remarks about sexual preferences.
User feedback is good. User complete control of development is not good. FunPidgin has guaranteed the latter, Pidgen has ignored both. Both bad decisions.
I’ve been using Pidgin a long time and I’m bitterly disappointed by developments in the last 5 years. It’s clear the core developers are moving in directions which are contrary to what users want which is made obvious by the proliferation of 3rd party plugins for it.
One of the clearest indications of developer hubris was the incorporation and then DUMPING of gaim-vv’s video chat work. It was very clear that users want the ability to use video chat/photosharing - Among other things it’s fairly hard to explain to the average winDUHs user why you can’t accept their cam/voice/photosharing invite, especially when they’re immediate family.
The beauty of open source is the ability to fork. The ugly part of open source is the ability to fork. HOWEVER, good forks will be incoorporated into the main code or BECOME the main code base.
Pidgin’s developers should take note of that fact. They can’t prevent their code updates being rolled into forks containing what users want, short of releasing new code under a more restrictive license - and if they’ve used anyone else’s contributions then they can’t do that without backing all of those out. Even then they can’t rescind GPLv2 on previous releases.
I think funpidgin is a shot across the bows and given what happened to gaim-vv, I expect that should another “incorporate, then dump” attempt be made that more forks will pop up.
FWIW: Pidgin 2.4.2 now incorporates resizable message boxes. The shot worked.
There are a lot more improvements in funpidgin SVN that should be incorporated - especially given the MSN plugin developer’s gripes about being ignored by Pidgin mainstream (I am getting a LOT of MSN problems which I’ve tracked down to Pidgin using old protocols MSN is trying to discourage use of)
“Users Are Not Designers”
Neither are most developers.
(Pidgin developer here)
I am not going to address this article here, but only to correct some misinformed comments:
#17 Aleksey: support for newer msn protocol is being worked on, 2.4.2 ships with a compile time switch to enable this experimental feature.
#24 anon2: support for custom smiley will be in 2.5.0. Voice and video is one of this year’s GSoC projects.
#26 Kirrus: I am not aware of such a ticket, I’d be glad if you point me to the ticket number
I am not sure that the Funpidgin developers planned on working on any of the above features, other than taking the code on pidgin’s repository and then claim that they have the features. That’s not surprising though, consider that their lead developer admitted that he doesn’t know much about C at all.
Fun Pidgin will rock and you will see.
Funpidgin will of course fail, exactly for the reasons you are quoting. But what it does is pointing out something much more important: that Pidgin is also failing, because that project does the opposite extreme: refuses to listen to its users. It’s a small group of people, tha for years and years have done whatever they wanted and released when they felt like it, and damn all those who use it, because this is our project and you can all go *** yourself. They even state as much officially.
So, the fork is fundamentally flawed and unsound, but so is the original project. The sad thing is that this will not make them listen, and neither will users get what they want.
Of course, I hope for Empathy, but that is moving sloooooooowwwwlllyyyy.
Where’s the argument here, this is just open source in action.
If you prefer the FunPidgin way of doing things in a democracy then use FunPidgin.
If you prefer the humanitarian dictator with socialist benefits then use Pidgin.
If you prefer a nice democratic and socialist balance that has msn web cam support use Kopete.
P.S. I am not in any comparing projects to nations - honest.
[…] Paul, Celeste L. May 2008. Four Words for Funpidgin. http://weblog.obso1337.org/2008/four-words-for-funpidgin. […]
Claire Leboe said a lot.
Pidgin people is arrogant, thinks they know what’s best for ME, and, redundantly, arrogant. As your post.
We have a simple bug being opened and closed by pidgin developers since… 2001, 2002. Closing the bug won’t make the issue go away. But you think it does.
Every fork of gaim/pidgin failed. That’s a shame.
And that’s why more and more people go to kopete/amsn/whatever. Not that user base migration matters, but loosing a user is bad. It is bad indeed.
And you are asking to… For half a decade at least.