new pidgin

[Joel Thibault (MacPorts)]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 3:55 AM, Ryan Schmidt ryandesign-at-macports.org wrote:
> On May 2, 2008, at 23:15, Daniel J. Luke wrote:
>
>> On May 2, 2008, at 9:40 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>>
>>> On May 2, 2008, at 12:47 PM, MAS! wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I had a look for the new pidgin once and decided to not
>>>>> update pidgin as I disagree with the new features such
>>>>> as automatic resize of the input text area.
>>>>
>>>> I see.. btw, IMHO, that's a real pity :(
>>>
>>> Yeah, that doesn't sound like a good reason not to update the port. If a
>>> new version of software is released, the port should be updated to that
>>> version (assuming it compiles on our supported platforms and such). If
>>> there's a need for keeping the older version around, then I agree with the
>>> previous poster who said a new port should then be created (by copying the
>>> older version of the pidgin port).
>>
>> I think this change has actually caused the pidgin project to fork, so
>> there's probably an alternate port that could be created from the forked
>> code that doesn't have the resizing input text area.
>
> Maybe I don't understand the issue, but it seems like it would be simpler to
> just have a checkbox in the preferences, or something, rather than fork the
> whole project.

Indeed.  The forkers suggested exactly that.  However, the maintainers
refused, and a new project "funpidgin" was born.  From funpidgin's
perspective, this is only the latest in a history of arrogant moves by
the pidgin maintainers.

More background:

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/30/1822237&from=rss
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/4986
http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funpidgin


-- 
Joel Thibault [AIM: Jole Tebo]
Software Engineer in Boston