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[Gaim-i18n] [Gaim-packagers] Important and long delayed news
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From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2007-04-07 13:57:40
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Dear translators, Many years ago, when this project was first started, it was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." AOL naturally complained, and Mark Spencer changed the name to "Gaim." AOL was appeased, and no one really ever heard of it because there were very few users back then. A few years passed, AOL trademarked "AIM," and started refering to their IM services under that name. They complained. The issue was brought up on Slashdot, and the developers at the time got some legal support. That legal support advised that the ongoing discussions with AOL be kept confidential until fully settled, and so it remained. Everyone thought the issue went away then. It sorta did, in that AOL stopped responding to the legal support for a while. Our legal support has changed several times, and each group of lawyers have recommended silence & secrecy. Around the time of the first 2.0.0 beta, AOL came back into our lives in a very strong way, this time threatening to sue Sean. This represents a clear pattern. AOL received more pushback than they expected, and would sort of let things stand for a while. They they woudl threaten a different Gaim developer. Each time a new Gaim developer was threatened, we had to look at new legal support. This process could not go on forever. As a result we ended up forming the Instant Messaging Freedom Coporation, and making it legally responsible for Gaim. We also had our new legal support work to create a real settlement with AOL that would get this issue dismissed from our lives forever. Getting a settlement with AOL has taken FAR FAR longer than we would have ever guessed. On legal advise, we have refrained from any non-beta release during this process as a show of good faith, and to keep AOL from giving up on it. Again, on legal advise, we have also kept this information closely embargoed. At long last, I am pleased to announce, that we have a signed settlement, and can again release. There is one catch however, we have had to change the project's name. After long, and unfortunately secret (as we could not say why we were looking at a name change, we ended up just doing this ourselves), debate, we settled on the name "Pidgin" for gaim itself, "libpurple" for libgaim (which, as of 2.0.0 beta6, exists), and "finch" for gaim-text. Yes, the spelling of "Pidgin" is intentional. Since between the name, and the nature of the 2.0.0 release itself, so much is changing, we decided to go ahead with something we have talked about doing for a while now anyway. We have gotten our own server, kindly donated by DVLabs. As a result our new home will be www.pidgin.im and developer.pidgin.im We, at least for now, will still be using SF's mirroring system for releases. However, the bug tracking will no longer be on SF, and we will be migrating the mailing lists at some point soon. Also, we have chosen to go with monotone for our revision control, rather than the SF cvs or svn. In the last week or so, an upgrade to SF's infrastructure caused an old version of the gaim-cabal list to become briefly public. It has always been our intention to end-of-life this list and make its archives public once the settlement was signed. Fortunately, very few people took notice of the lapse, and equally fortunately, the legal process has concluded, allowing us to make a formal announcement now, instead of months from now. I, and all of pidgin's development team have deaply hated the need to keep some portion of our work, decision making and discussion secret for a time. I sincerely appologize that as a result of this need, you all have had no chance to help us with it, and to provide feedback. I also regret that this will create additional work for you. Now that the settlement is signed, we are looking at making our public announcement sometime this weekend or early this coming week. We hope to have the final pidgin 2.0.0 release late this week or early next. I know we have announced a string freeze several times, and only poorly kept the source actually frozen. Hopefully you now see why there were several false attempts at releasing (delays in the legal process), and why it has been hard to honor the string freeze (no sure notion of when exactly we would be able to release, whether in weeks or in months). This will be the last string change before the final release. Ethan tells me that for some languages this will be more than a search and replace operation, or I would just sed the po files and change the name myself. Nathan is working on getting a new copy of the i18n page up at www.pidgin.im. We are closing the SF tracker (I believe there are one or two translation updates still in it. I will grab those shortly), so new updates should go to developer.pidgin.im, just create a ticket for them. You may need to gzip your po file to be able to upload it. luke luke ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Gaim-packagers mailing list Gai...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-packagers ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Gaim-packagers mailing list Gai...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gaim-packagers |