Re: Module proposal: Empathy for GNOME 2.22

[Travis Reitter <treitter-dev netdrain com>]

I read the thread - I just responded in general. But let me get a little
more specific:

>From my own perspective, I would describe the three "competing"
applications as:

Empathy is a general communications program based around Telepathy, and
meant to be well-integrated into Gnome.

Ekiga is a video/audio softphone which is already part of the Gnome
Desktop, but implements each communication protocol on its own.

Pidgin is a popular multi-protocol instant messaging appliation with no
intention to integrate deeply with Gnome (let alone become part of the
Desktop/Platform).

The main benefit here is that Telepathy is a plugin-based general
communications stack which has a lot of community and commercial support
and in my (and many other peoples') opinion a well-designed framework
which is increasingly polished and increasingly-relevant to Gnome.

Because Empathy builds on Telepathy, instead of building its own silo, I
don't think it's fair to call it a "duplication of effort". And I'd say
that the Empathy/Telepathy stack is certainly worth inclusion in Gnome
when we all decide it's polished enough.

-Travis


On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 21:37 -0500, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> You appear to have not read the thread.
> 
> On 9/23/07, Travis Reitter <treitter-dev netdrain com> wrote:
>         Jason,
>         
>         Motivation for unpaid Free Software development isn't the same
>         as for 
>         commercial software. You can't just tell someone which
>         project(s) they
>         get to work on. They will work on which project(s) they think
>         are most
>         interesting and/or important or they'll choose to do something
>         else with 
>         their time.
>         
>         Duplication of effort is frustrating, but that's just how this
>         development model works. And it's important to note that
>         Pidgin, Ekiga,
>         and Empathy have different goals and implementations, so it's
>         not like 
>         they're all trying to do literally the same things. Thus any
>         perceived
>         duplication of effort isn't as bad as it may seem.
>         
>         -Travis
>         
>         On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 16:00 -0500, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
>         > -1
>         >
>         > Needless duplication of work covered by Pidgin and Ekiga
>         (and, so far,
>         > done better). This is a reimplementation of the wheel.
>         >
>         > If the last two Gnome releases are any indication, we are
>         strapped for 
>         > resources - taking on new modules that add absolutely
>         nothing
>         > features-wise but DO add additional maintenance work doesn't
>         seem like
>         > a good idea ... for now ...
>         >
>         > Maybe in 2.24.
>         >
>         >
>         > On 9/23/07, Xavier Claessens <xclaesse gmail com> wrote:
>         >         Hi,
>         >
>         >         * Proposal: Include Empathy in GNOME 2.22 desktop.
>         >
>         >         * Purpose: Empathy [1] consists of a rich set of
>         reusable
>         >         instant
>         >         messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those
>         widgets. It
>         >         uses
>         >         Telepathy and Nokia's Mission Control, and reuses
>         Gossip's UI. 
>         >         The main
>         >         goal is to permit desktop integration by providing
>         libempathy
>         >         and
>         >         libempathy-gtk libraries. libempathy-gtk is a set of
>         powerful
>         >         widgets 
>         >         that can be embeded into any GNOME application.
>         >
>         >         * Dependencies:
>         >            glib-2.0 >= 2.14.0
>         >            gconf-2.0 >= 1.2.0
>         >            libxml-2.0
>         >             gnome-vfs-2.0
>         >            libtelepathy >= 0.0.57
>         >            libmissioncontrol >= 4.33
>         >            gtk+-2.0 >= 2.12.0
>         >            libglade-2.0 >= 2.0.0
>         >            libgnomeui-2.0 
>         >            libebook-1.2
>         >            libpanelapplet-2.0 >= 2.10.0
>         >
>         >         * Resource usage: Already using GNOME FTP, GNOME SVN
>         and GNOME
>         >         bugzilla.
>         >
>         >         * Adoption: It is packaged at least for debian,
>         ubuntu, 
>         >         mandriva, gentoo
>         >         and fedora. It is used by Intel for the moblin [2]
>         platform.
>         >         There is
>         >         patches for Totem and nautilus-send-to [3] to make
>         use of
>         >         libempathy(-gtk). Someone was working on integration
>         in 
>         >         gtetrinet but I
>         >         don't know the status of that work. There is also an
>         epiphany
>         >         plugin
>         >         [4]. Work was being done for GSoC to integrate
>         Empathy into
>         >         Jockosher 
>         >         [5]. Empathy is also used by Soylent [6].
>         >
>         >         * GNOME-ness: The community reports bugs in GNOME
>         bugzilla and
>         >         attach
>         >         patches, I review and commit in GNOME's SVN. Some
>         i18n teams 
>         >         already
>         >         started to commit translations. I take care of
>         usability
>         >         thanks to loads
>         >         of usability bugs opened by Vincent Untz. User
>         documentation
>         >         is not 
>         >         started yet, I guess we can pick gossip's doc and
>         adapt it for
>         >         Empathy
>         >         since the UI is almost the same.
>         >
>         >         * Miscellaneous:
>         >         - There is patches to support File Transfer, Voice
>         and Video. 
>         >         I think
>         >         it will be ready before GNOME 2.22 feature freeze.
>         >         - Empathy is still a young project with some bugs
>         but I'm
>         >         pretty sure
>         >         we can fix them in time for GNOME 2.22.
>         >         - At some point we'll have same features than Ekiga
>         which is
>         >         already in
>         >         GNOME desktop. The big advantage of Empathy is it
>         uses
>         >         Telepathy
>         >         framework which make easy for desktop integration
>         and means 
>         >         we'll have
>         >         VoIP for all protocols (SIP, MSN, Jabber, etc).
>         Empathy
>         >         supports all IM
>         >         features (private chat, chatroom, presence, avatar,
>         alias,
>         >         etc), not 
>         >         only Voice and Video. Ekiga don't have those
>         advantages.
>         >
>         >         Thanks,
>         >         Xavier Claessens.
>         >
>         >         [1] http://live.gnome.org/Empathy
>         >         [2] http://www.moblin.org/projects_chat.html
>         >         [3] http://www.barisione.org/blog.html/p=100
>         >         [4]
>         http://blog.senko.net/2007/07/19/emphatic-epiphany
>         >         [5]
>         http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2007/05/07/jokosher-soc
>         >         [6] http://live.gnome.org/Soylent
>         >
>         >
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