On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 06:48:37PM -0800, David Walser wrote: > Is there any reason we need everybuddy or ayttm in > main when we have Gaim and Kopete?
Well this is how I see the situation... gaim, everybuddy and ayttm is gnome. kopete is KDE. Kopete and everybuddy/ayttm are well integrated IM clients. Clients that were designed to work with several of the IM services. Gaim, while more popular than everybuddy, just doesn't seem as well designed from my viewpoint. I really don't think it's as easy to use. But to be honest it's been a while since I've used it. Virtually all my Linux friends are using everybuddy for an IM client at this point in time. We've shipped broken everybuddies in the last two versions. Which caused a number of people to come around on IRC asking about the bugs and how to get an updated version. If we look at votes on the club there are 97 votes for gaim and 75 for kopete and none for everybuddy. But the big issue with everybuddy has been that it simply hasn't been stable. This has been especially true with regards to the versions Mandrake has shipped. Like I said we've shipped broken versions for two releases now. ayttm has made this their priority to fix and as far as I've seen they have. The exception being that ICQ support for me is still broken, but from what I've seen not everyone is having this issue. Part of the issue too is that IM clients under Linux have had a history of being broken. If Protocol A is broken on one client it may work on another better. Support for various protocols and their functionality differs greatly between programs. Ultimately, we're in a situation where none of these apps are really best of breed. They all have their trade offs, so I would error on the side of being overly inclusive in this situation than not. However, on the other hand... everybuddy has pretty much been maintainer-less. Lenny is currently assigned the package. But for the most part I've been the one who's bee updated the package. Since I can't directly maintain it if it's in main, it's a bit more of a hassle. Moving it to contrib would allow me to do it directly, alieving time constraints on Lenny. I would imagine the same will be true of ayttm. In summary, I think everybuddy/ayttm are certainly popular enough to warrant inclusion in main (at least from my experience). That IM clients have problems from time to time with various protocols and so choice is important in this case. But at the same time... they are pretty much orphaned packages as long as they are in main. -- Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://ben.reser.org "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own." -- John Quincy Adams, July 4th, 1821
