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From: Sean E. <sea...@gm...> - 2006-04-28 22:45:59
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Evan wasn't in the cabal before. Now he is. A quick overview of the current topics of discussion: Name change - AOL has been threatening to sue us (well... Mark Spencer, and then me) since as long as Gaim's existed for trademark infringement. I have lawyers who have been representing Gaim's interest against AOL. We have not yet decided to change our name, but the lawyers recommend we come up with something just in case we are required to. We have had an absolute terrible time doing this, and we've been going back and forth for months. The only one we've actually liked so far is "Grapevine," but the lawyers did some research and decided it we couldn't use it. This morning, I suggested "Cohort." Please tell me you have some ideas. Oh, and we've decided libgaim will be renamed libpurple. Corporation - the same lawyers have helped me set up a Delaware corporation, the Instant Messaging Freedom Corporation, dedicated to Gaim. We have a bank account, and money, and we will be filling for tax-exempt status and all that jazz. Summer of Code - Have any ideas? Wanna mentor for Gaim projects as well? -s. |
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From: Evan S. <ev...@dr...> - 2006-04-28 23:16:05
Attachments:
PGP.sig
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On Apr 28, 2006, at 6:45 PM, Sean Egan wrote: > Name change - AOL has been threatening to sue us (well... Mark > Spencer, and then me) since as long as Gaim's existed for trademark > infringement. I remember this being an issue a long time ago, and then (from the perspective of a complete outsider at the time) it seems to disappear. Has the beast reawoken, did it never really disappear, or did some new Incident prompt further action by AOL? > This morning, I suggested "Cohort." Please tell me you have some > ideas. Cohort's pretty good. What about "Prosody"? > Oh, and we've decided libgaim will be renamed libpurple. I propose we rename it to a symbol which can not be represented in UTF-8 and insist on textual references being "the library formerly known as libgaim". > Corporation - the same lawyers have helped me set up a Delaware > corporation, the Instant Messaging Freedom Corporation, dedicated to > Gaim. We have a bank account, and money, and we will be filling for > tax-exempt status and all that jazz. Fascinating. What prompted this development? I note you didn't name it the Gaim Corporation or such; is that just because of the potential name change or do you intend to reach beyond the existing project with it? Something similar should probably done for Adium at some point... > Summer of Code - Have any ideas? Don't have any great ideas off-hand... - Mark already mentioned improvements to the privacy API as an SoC idea, which was going to be on my list of things to suggest. - I've suggested this already as an Adium project, in its own library, so we'd want to talk about it if an application came in on both Adium and Gaim: Implement file transfer in the Bonjour prpl. (Adium currently uses libezv, a Bonjour protocol library by Andrew Wellington, rather than the nascent libgaim Bonjour prpl. My guess is that implementation in one would make a port to the other reasonably easy, since right now there's simply no documentation on it that I'm aware of...) - Would it be appropriate for a student to take what's done so far on the MSNp11 stuff, finish it, integrate it into Gaim, and perhaps integrate further improvements (such as modern MSN file transfer)? The latter would probably be the 'primary work' of the project proposal, since the student is supposed to do something new, I believe. > Wanna mentor for Gaim projects as well? I'd be happy to mentor if a project came in that I'd be qualified to mentor for... I've got good familiarity with most of Gaim's code base, and with the overall structure, but I'm hardly an expert in any particular area. I'll go ahead and request to be a mentor, and we'll play it by ear when applications come in. Sound good? Cheers, Evan |
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From: Sean E. <sea...@gm...> - 2006-04-29 00:34:12
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On 4/28/06, Evan Schoenberg <ev...@dr...> wrote: > I remember this being an issue a long time ago, and then (from the > perspective of a complete outsider at the time) it seems to > disappear. Has the beast reawoken, did it never really disappear, or > did some new Incident prompt further action by AOL? The first time this was an issue was way back before it was even called Gaim, but called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." Nobody used Gaim back then, so nobody ever heard about this. Mark renamed it "Gaim," and AOL was appeased. Later, they trademarked "AIM," and started referring to themselves as "AIM," rather than just AOL Instant Messenger. A few years passed, and they complained about AIM. This is when Mark sought out help, and it went to Slashdot. Since then, we've had several sets of lawyers, who all recommend against discussing any of this publically, which is why everyone thinks it's gone away. It stays within the cabal. The current status is that our lawyers have requested that AOL come up with a list of everything they might object to us doing, with the goal of settling the issue out-of-court, where we'd change our name in exchange for getting a carte blanche on reverse engineering their protocol and enabling people to connect without using their software. > > This morning, I suggested "Cohort." Please tell me you have some > > ideas. > Cohort's pretty good. What about "Prosody"? Eh. Better names have been suggested. > > Oh, and we've decided libgaim will be renamed libpurple. > I propose we rename it to a symbol which can not be represented in > UTF-8 and insist on textual reference;s being "the library formerly > known as libgaim". Let's do this for Gaim... and then we'll know we've made it when our symbol makes it into Unicode. > Fascinating. What prompted this development? I note you didn't name > it the Gaim Corporation or such; is that just because of the > potential name change or do you intend to reach beyond the existing > project with it? Something similar should probably done for Adium at > some point... It was a combination of two things: a) Right now, AOL isn't threatening to sue Gaim, but to sue me. That's scary. When I step down, AOL will try to sue my successor, and none of what I accomplished will hold over. The goal of imfreedom is to reduce the liability to individual Gaim developers. Additionally, people have been wanting to donate money to us forever, and we've always declined, as we don't have any means to collect this money, other than an individual collecting the money, paying tax on it, being trusted with it, etc. This way we can actually take the money and not pay tax on it, and have it owned specifically by Gaim. Last year's summer of code was the direct cause of us doing this. We wanted to accept the $7,500, but didn't want to pay a third of it to the IRS, so we've used some of that to found the corporation and then put the rest of it in the bank. The first thing we plan to spend it on is to hire a graphic designer to revamp some of Gaim's icons. I've been talking with three such designers so far. The lawyers recommended that we keep the name as neutral as possible, in case we have to change names. Seeing as Adium falls under the category of Instant Messaging Freedom, if you guys would like to organize with us at all, at least for the purpose of taking your SoC money without tax, you should let me know, and we can discuss it. > > Wanna mentor for Gaim projects as well? > I'd be happy to mentor if a project came in that I'd be qualified to > mentor for... I've got good familiarity with most of Gaim's code > base, and with the overall structure, but I'm hardly an expert in any > particular area. I'll go ahead and request to be a mentor, and we'll > play it by ear when applications come in. Sound good? I accepted you. |
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From: Richard L. <rl...@wi...> - 2006-04-29 09:19:37
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On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 19:15 -0400, Evan Schoenberg wrote: > On Apr 28, 2006, at 6:45 PM, Sean Egan wrote: > - Would it be appropriate for a student to take what's done so far > on the MSNp11 stuff, finish it, integrate it into Gaim, and perhaps > integrate further improvements (such as modern MSN file transfer)? > The latter would probably be the 'primary work' of the project > proposal, since the student is supposed to do something new, I believe. If I understood things correctly, it was decided last year that MSN file transfer wasn't enough to justify a spot, since it's already implemented in other clients and just needs to be written for Gaim. However, adding in MSNP11 is an interesting twist... I had thought about suggesting MSNP11, but the problem I had with that idea is that MSN 8.0 is in beta. It uses MSNP13 or some such. If we were going to have an SoC student work on something, it should probably be that. I suppose they could sign up for the beta if Microsoft is still taking users there. Then they could implement MSNP13 for Gaim and if time permitted, MSN P2P file transfer as well. Perhaps we'd end up with everything #ifdef'ed to the PROTOCOL_VERSION or something like that. Then, when MSNP13 becomes available for everyone, we could just switch the #define. Having offline messaging, status messages, and P2P file transfer in MSN would definitely be nice. Richard |
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From: Luke S. <lsc...@us...> - 2006-04-29 13:08:45
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On Sat, Apr 29, 2006 at 04:19:30AM -0500, Richard Laager wrote: > On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 19:15 -0400, Evan Schoenberg wrote: > > On Apr 28, 2006, at 6:45 PM, Sean Egan wrote: > > - Would it be appropriate for a student to take what's done so far > > on the MSNp11 stuff, finish it, integrate it into Gaim, and perhaps > > integrate further improvements (such as modern MSN file transfer)? > > The latter would probably be the 'primary work' of the project > > proposal, since the student is supposed to do something new, I believe. > > If I understood things correctly, it was decided last year that MSN file > transfer wasn't enough to justify a spot, since it's already implemented > in other clients and just needs to be written for Gaim. However, adding > in MSNP11 is an interesting twist... > > I had thought about suggesting MSNP11, but the problem I had with that > idea is that MSN 8.0 is in beta. It uses MSNP13 or some such. If we were > going to have an SoC student work on something, it should probably be > that. > > I suppose they could sign up for the beta if Microsoft is still taking > users there. Then they could implement MSNP13 for Gaim and if time > permitted, MSN P2P file transfer as well. > > Perhaps we'd end up with everything #ifdef'ed to the PROTOCOL_VERSION or > something like that. Then, when MSNP13 becomes available for everyone, > we could just switch the #define. > > Having offline messaging, status messages, and P2P file transfer in MSN > would definitely be nice. > > Richard If Richard and/or nosnilmot are willing to mentor this one, I think it would make a good SoC project. It would provide some much needed man power to get that work completed, and for once not to be playing catchup to Microsoft's newest version. luke |
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