Since this is the intended behaviour, I'm changing status to rejected. If you feel strongly about the matter, I would suggest discussing it upstream (probably with Metacity devs) . Thanks for taking the time to file a bug report.
** Changed in: gaim (Ubuntu) Status: Unconfirmed => Rejected -- [Dapper] When a buddy starts talking to me, the window doesn't gain the focus https://launchpad.net/bugs/40006 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs