This obviously took me a long time to get to, but I finally have.
1. As discussed with Ari, I have adopted the Pidgin package. I also made a few cleanups at the same time. More extensive updating (e.g. to modern debhelper compat) will probably have to wait until after bullseye, given the impending freeze. 2. I have uploaded libgnt, which should hit the NEW queue. 3. I have a Pidgin 2.14.1 package prepared, which uses the libgnt package. As soon as libgnt clears NEW, I can upload pidgin. -- Richard