On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Gordon <[email protected]> wrote: > What drove me to comment on all of this is the way that Felipe is going about > trying to have his 'fork' included in the next Adium release.
It's not "mine" as there's a bunch of people that contribute to the project. And it's not a 'fork' because I wrote the original one; it's more like the code switched homes. > Felipe, the primary Adium developers have already given you very valid > reasons why they will not switch to msn-pecan for this release. 'No > regressions' is not just a buzzword, it is policy. Policy is just a word, policies can change, and policies can be stupid (I'm not saying this one is). > You need to accept that. No. > I am one of those people that use MSN -> Yahoo contacts. Would direct file > transfers be nice? Possibly for some people, but for myself, I use gmail to > transfer files up to a certain size and FTP for files past that size. Would I > appreciate that I could no longer use the MSN -> Yahoo bridge in exchange for > direct file transfers? Not at all. If I wasn't following this listserv and > didn't know about losing Yahoo contacts, I likely would have filed a bug > report, which in turn would have taken precious time away from the developers. Ok, so that's *one* person that cares about this. I have a question for you: What's the percentage of YIM contacts in your MSN account? > Furthermore, according to your blog, msn-pecan has been stable at 0.1 at less > than a month. I don't know about everybody else, but switching from a proven, > stable library to something that is essentially a hostile fork, which hasn't > even been in use for more than a month, seems dangerous within a popular > product like Adium. Wrong. msn-pecan has been stable most of the time with some up and downs, 0.1 is the first release that is considered *serious*. Not stable; rock-solid. And wrong; libpurple's stock msn is proven _unstable_. You can even read it from the mouth of Pidgin developers: http://theflamingbanker.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-subject-of-bugs-or-help-wanted-and.html Don't spread FUD; msn-pecan has been used by a considerable use-base since years in many different platforms. > If direct file transfers is such a hot request, what is to stop you (or > somebody else) from submitting it as a patch to libpurple? As I said before; the code of libpurple's msn is beyond redemption. I would have to make *huge* drastic changes to all the MSNSLP code (which I wrote entirely) to even be slightly confident about it. And to keep the code simple I would have to implement the network abstractions that I already did in msn-pecan. Pidgin developers don't want that. > It almost seems like you are doing this to spite the maintainers of > libpurple, which is not a vote of confidence for the ability to work with you. We, the people involved in msn-pecan, collaborate just fine with Telepathy, AMSN, papyon, and Instantbird developers. Pidgin developers don't, not even with GNOME, or freedesktop. > You might have the greatest product in the world, but what happens if you > have a disagreement and decide to not support msn-pecan anymore? Well, this > is exactly what you've done with libpurple - you say so yourself on your > blog. This does not instil confidence. You speak as if Pidgin developers were supporting MSN just fine; they are not. Moreover, I have been supporting this MSN code for 10 years now, the fact that Pidgin developers decided to stop picking up the goodness is *their* fault. > Felipe, the way you are going about this is very odd and you can come across > as very abrasive. You have taken the time to reply to many of the developers' > valid points with sarcastic and sometimes aggressive retorts. One example of > this is "As I said in another reply; empty slogans such as "no regressions" > mean nothing. It's just a way of making engineers (or managers) happy.". > You're attacking common Adium policy here. Criticizing policy is not heresy. > Heck, it is the policy of any good shipping software. In my opinion, the only > time a feature regression would be acceptable is if it fixes a severe, > crippling bug. As far as I've seen from my own heavy use in Adium, Libpurple > is stable and I've come across very few bugs. Avoid regressions as much as possible is a good policy. No regressions ever until the end of times even if most users would be happy with it, is not. > For reference, I downloaded and tried the msn-pecan / Adium test from Google > Code when it was first announced. I didn't catch any noticeable benefits so I > subsequently switched back to the stock Adium. I was initially impressed by > the enthusiasm, but after researching the history of the fork and what it > does exactly, I can say that I've lost that enthusiasm. Good that it works for you... I assume you don't care about the countless people that can't even login or get constant disconnections. > You need to accept what the developers have said repeatedly. Things are > already progressing very slowly getting the next release out the door. Even > if msn-pecan did not introduce a somewhat major feature regression, it would > likely not be included in 1.4. The most likely scenario is that when the > developers focus on 1.5 they might be ready to consider msn-pecan, at which > point somebody will likely let you know. But as it is, the time and resources > to implement a change like this for the next release is not possible. Your > regular bombardment of emails to the developers is not going to magically > convince them otherwise. You are distorting the conversation. 1) msn-pecan was proposed for 1.4 if the Yahoo regression was fixed 2) I provided a bunch of reasons why I think the Yahoo regression is not important 3) The fact that it was even a regression was contended 4) Regardless of the result of 3) Adium developers decided that it's too soon for 1.4 5) You came by *Now* that it has been explained that it's too soon for 1.4 (regardless of the YIM issue), it's perfectly sensible to aim for 1.5. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras
