Re: The noninclusion of Gaim

[Mark Finlay <sisob tuxfamily org>]

> Why "massive"?  

I may have over exadurated

> What usability experts have reviewed it and concluded 
> that?  I cannot cite any testing with Gaim or AOL's client, but I can tell 
> you that I use Gaim and love the interface.  

Well there has actually been usability work done on improving the way IM
works in general. See "Designing from both sides of the screen" and
their project hubbub (google for it).

I firmly believe that pretty much all the IM clients today are stuck in
a rut. They are all pretty much alike and share the same inherited
problems. iChat and Hubbub have shown that vast improvements can be made
in the way IM works.

At the end of the day I don't see Gnome a providing top class clones of
software already available - i see it as a platform for genuine
innovation and originality and a place to create a next generation
desktop.

I could be wrong, but I have the impression that the gaim team would not
be inline with these kind of ideas, but that projects and programmers
closer to the Gnome project would be.


> > I think that gaim should be the galeon of IM and for Gnome we need
> > something that fits in better with the goals of Gnome.
> 
> That is not unreasonable.  It is more realistic than trying to badger the 
> Gaim guys into conforming with a project with which they don't share the 
> general sentiment and stated goals.

Agreed - Gaim is not going to be any less avaliable because Gnome doesnt
ship it - it comes with every decent distro out there anyway. We have to
be very careful about adding software to Gnome because it is very hard
to remove software later.

-- 
Mark Finlay 
Computer Science Student

E-Mail:	sisob_AT_tuxfamily_DOT_org
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 	http://advogato.org/person/sisob