Re: Module proposal: Empathy for GNOME 2.24

["Xavier Claessens" <xclaesse gmail com>]

Ok so I summarize so far here are objections:

1) libmissioncontrol is LGPLv2-only
That's a problem and it won't re relicenced. However it will be droped at some point and replaced by a dbus API that we'll access via telepathy-glib which is LGPLv2+. This is only a problem if GNOME wants to move to GPLv3 and it won't happen soon, I'm pretty sure empathy won't use libmissioncontrol sooner.

2) libempathy and libempathy-gtk are GPL
This is only a problem if we want them in the plateform. Currently it's proposed for the desktop so it's not a problem yet. It will be a problem when we want to move them in the plateform. If I see copyrights in GPL headers of all Empathy files I see Imendio+Collabora+some personal that are ok to relicence. We have to contact all other "little" contributors but I think those are not a real obstacle if we ask on gossip's mailing list + grap emails in the changelog. The problem here is mostly imendio who owns most of libempathy-gtk.

3) API documentation is empty.
Yes that's a real problem that needs to be fixed and it will take time. It was an objection last time and it didn't improve. I would appreciate help here even if I know I'm the best one to write doc of the API I wrote...

4) various user problems for missing feature X, Y
I think this is a minor issue, features can be added later. GNOME doesn't have an IM client so missing features in Empathy are not regressions.

5) Overall stability
That got lot of improvements since last time and is the major point we should focus to accept or reject Empathy. I think most of bugs are easy to fix and only need more help from the community to report bugs and propose patches. This is different from point 4 even if both are reported using bugzilla.

Did I forgot something?
Xavier Claessens.

2008/3/25, Xavier Claessens <xclaesse gmail com>:

* Proposal: Include Empathy in GNOME 2.24 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 >= 2.16.0
  gconf-2.0 >= 1.2.0
  libxml-2.0
  libtelepathy >= 0.3.2
  telepathy-glib >= 0.7.3
  libmissioncontrol >= 4.53
  gtk+-2.0 >= 2.12.0
  libglade-2.0 >= 2.0.0
  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. There is patches for Totem and nautilus-send-to [2] to make
use of libempathy(-gtk). There is a gtetrinet branch which uses
libempathy-gtk to play with contacts. There is also a python plugin for
epiphany using pyempathygtk [3]. Empathy is also used by Soylent [4].

* GNOME-ness: The community reports bugs in GNOME bugzilla and attach
patches, I review and commit in GNOME's SVN. GNOME translation teams are
already translating empathy. The UI is build with GNOME spirit in mind,
empathy inherit from Gossip's excellent UI.

* Miscellaneous:
  - Audio/Video support is still disabled by default but most problems
comes from other telepathy layers and are being worked. I'm pretty sure
it will be enabled soon. That means Empathy will be able to do
audio/video calls over SIP and Jabber, MSN will surely come at some
point too. Empathy is the only program capable of that AFAIK.
  - libtelepathy is now deprecated, empathy is moving to telepathy-glib.
If we finish the transition we'll drop libtelepathy dependency.
  - Empathy's part for file-transfer is almost done, but the telepathy
spec is likely to change soon. I hope it will be ready in time for 2.24.
  - API is still not documented and likely to change, I know this sucks.
  - There is no user documentation yet, I'll write an email to ask
documentation team to write one base on Gossip's doc.
  - Empathy was proposed for GNOME 2.22 but got rejected because it was
not considered stable/mature enough. Lots is already fixed and I hope to
fix more during the 6 months coming. Help from the community is of
course welcome!

Thanks,
Xavier Claessens.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/Empathy
[2] http://www.barisione.org/blog.html/p=100
[3] http://blog.senko.net/2007/07/19/emphatic-epiphany
[4] http://live.gnome.org/Soylent