I'm not a heavy MSN user at all, but it's my understanding that there are feature regressions in MSN-Pecan. What are they, and can they be fixed?
I would not be in favor of protocol code that means feature regressions for us. On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 7:52 AM, Chris Forsythe <[email protected]> wrote: > If you think it's good enough, why is it not numbered 1.0? It's a bit odd > that it's such a low version number, that doesn't instill confidence to me. > (yes, I know, it's "just a version number". But not really.) > > Chris > > On Mar 12, 2010, at 4:37 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> Back in 2008 there was a proposal to use msn-pecan, and even though I >> wasn't sure about msn-pecan's stability, I promised to do my best to >> fix as many bugs as possible: >> http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/2008-June/005183.html >> >> However, Pidgin's MSNP15 came into play and the decision was to switch >> to it, leaving open the possibility to switch back to msn-pecan once >> the features were outgrown: >> http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/2008-September/005765.html >> >> I believe this moment has come with the 0.1 release which I consider >> to be rock-solid, and has the most requested features: direct file >> transfers, and offline messages (sending and receiving). Pidgin >> doesn't support direct file transfers, and probably won't any time >> soon. >> >> I hope at this point in time it's clear which protocol plug-in is >> better. However, there are more important reasons why I think >> msn-pecan should be used, and my argument resides in three premises: >> >> 1) I am the one that has better knowledge of *both* code-bases; >> msn-pecan, and stock libpurple >> >> As you can see this an old blog post [1]; 42% of my code from 2004 >> hasn't been changed. The second biggest contributor is QuLogic with >> only 18% (way behind). If you use stock libpurple you'll be trusting >> two guys that wrote only 25% of the code. >> >> 2) Pidgin guys have admitted the MSN protocol is *under-maintained* >> >> John Bailey explained in his blog[2] the reason of their negligence >> regarding the MSN protocol; most of the developers don't care. He also >> explained that they need help which is no surprise due to their lack >> of expertise on their own code. >> >> 3) The plug-in is not only under-maintained, but also badly maintained >> >> I plotted some bug statistics[3] and the results are crystal clear: >> msn-pecan has fixed 78% of the valid bugs reported, while Pidgin only >> 37%. Even if we concentrate only on the bugs that are open at the >> moment (which are in the 2 week window before they are automatically >> closed), those are not properly prioritized, nor categorized like in >> msn-pecan. So in essence, bugs reported to msn-pecan have much higher >> chances of actually be fixed. >> >> >> All in all, I don't see any future in libpurple's stock MSN plugin, >> and I don't think Adium should stick with it, specially since it's the >> most popular service[4]. Besides, msn-pecan does have a plan forward >> [5], while Pidgin doesn't. And finally, if you find any problems with >> msn-pecan, they will be tackled eventually for sure. >> >> Cheers. >> >> [1] >> http://felipec.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/who-wrote-pidgins-msn-not-who-you-think/ >> [2] >> http://theflamingbanker.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-subject-of-bugs-or-help-wanted-and.html >> [3] >> http://felipec.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/pidgin-vs-msn-pecan-bug-numbers-dont-lie/ >> [4] http://adium.im/sparkle/#IMServicesWeighted >> [5] http://code.google.com/p/msn-pecan/wiki/ToDo >> >> -- >> Felipe Contreras >> > > >
