Re: [Gaim-cabal] SoC: Student wants to add full QQ support to Adium/Gaim

[Luke S. <lsc...@us...>]

On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 11:37:08AM -0400, Evan Schoenberg wrote:
> 
> On May 1, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Ethan Blanton wrote:
> 
> >Evan Schoenberg spake unto us the following wisdom:
> >>I've got a student who wants to add QQ support this summer to Adium.
> >>I've suggested that getting Gaim approval and adding it to Gaim will
> >>be the best route.  I'd be milling to mentor the dude.  Shall I
> >>suggest he write a proposal and submit to Gaim rather than Adium?
> >>Alternately, how would you feel about a project under the Adium
> >>umbrella adding an acceptable prpl to Gaim?
> >
> >Either one of these courses seem fine to me.  I have no problem with
> >code working its way upstream from Adium, be it either through SoC or
> >otherwise.  :-)
> 
> Cool.  I've told the student to submit a strong proposal to both  
> Adium and Gaim (and that it can be substantively the same  
> application) -- that'll give us flexibility once all the apps are in  
> to decide where best to accept it [if we do] given mentor  
> responsibilities, number of other student projects, etc.
> 
> -Evan
> 

There are a number of QQ for gaim plugins out there for various
versions of gaim.  The problem with ALL of them is that they include
files (notably a binary data file) blatently ripped out of the
official client.  This is not acceptable from a GPL standpoint.  The
authors can't copyright a file they pulled out of the official
client, and thus we cannot release it under the GPL.

Your SoC student would have to implement QQ without using this file
or any implementation of QQ that is or derives from decompiled
binaries.  Last year we rejected QQ as a project because of the
difficulty of ensuring this when we know that people have been
working on QQ and gaim with no concern for copyright.

luke