Sorry somehow this got lost in my inbox. At any rate, I would expect us to have a 3.0 version that's acceptable for users by mid 2027. We're trying to make our next experimental release which is due 2026-03-31 to actually be Alpha 1. The difference of the Alpha title is that we're saying the protocol API shouldn't be changing much but we're still not guaranteeing API stability. This is basically a signal to third party developers that they can start working on stuff even though there are already a few experimenting.
As for XMPP, it'll get there when it gets there. I'm the primary developer for the entire project and with gtk 2 getting removed everywhere I have to focus on getting everything else ready and XMPP is a very complicated protocol to implement. It's still on the list of course, but it's being pushed back for Zulip which is another open source protocol that is much easier to implement. But basically, the goal right now is to stabilize APIs for third party protocol developers (nearly there), then focus on polishing the UI, then releasing for end users. On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 8:54 PM Jeremy Bícha <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 2:50 AM Gary Kramlich <[email protected]> > wrote: > > We've been anticipating that GTK2 will be removed from all distros most > likely this year. We have been busting our asses to get something together > so that Pidgin can remain in distros, but we just do not have the > resources. If you look at the last release, you will see that absolutely > everything came from me personally, if you look at the releases before that > you'll see that I am the main driving factor. When you force me to respond > to things I've already asked you not to do it cuts into that precious time > and slows things down. > > > > And I'll reiterate, removing from testing *WILL* increase my workload. > We've seen it from Ubuntu LTS's that had old buggy versions to Whonix and > everywhere in between. Users refuse to use a flatpak and instead attempt to > compile themselves and then require a ton of support. Which will be even > more so if `apt get build-dep` isn't an option because it's been removed > from testing. > > > > Regardless, you are going to do what you're going to do and I can not > control that. But I am pleading with you to please not make my burnout > (which has been mentioned in the release announcements which you claim to > have read) any worse. > > I don't want to make you feel pressured, but I acknowledge that my > work to try to remove gtk2 from Debian is unavoidably adding pressure > to maintainers of gtk2 apps. I am trying to be particularly sensitive > about Pidgin. It is the only gtk2 app other than the Debian Installer > that is still in Testing and not marked for autoremoval from Testing > because of the gtk2 transition. > > Do you think that Pidgin 3 might be usable for IRC and XMPP by > mid-2027? It's my opinion that those are the 2 key protocols supported > by Pidgin 2 that are of most interest to Debian users. Debian does > have some other IRC and XMPP apps though, so if Pidgin could only > handle one of those, it might still work. > > Thank you, > Jeremy Bícha > -- Thanks, Gary Kramlich <[email protected]>
