[Gossip-dev] Re: [Telepathy] Telepathy Status

[Mikael Hallendal]

15 okt 2006 kl. 04.20 skrev Dafydd Harries:

> Ar 13/10/2006 am 13:29, ysgrifennodd Mikael Hallendal:
>> As of now we are not going to switch to make Gossip a Telepathy  
>> client
>> if that is what you meant. We have a working client already,  
>> buying into
>> the "Telepathy philosophy" would require a huge overhaul and probably
>> would be better off starting with a new project all together.
>
> I disagree: I think it would be much more work to start a Gossip- 
> like client
> for Telepathy from scratch. Gossip is a lovely program: I prefer it  
> to any
> other IM client I've used, and I would love to be able to use it with
> Telepathy; not least because it would make it much easier for me  
> and others to
> use Telepathy as our primary IM system. (Currently, I'm using  
> Gossip because
> there isn't a Telepathy client that's nearly as good.)

That comment was based on the wrong image of how the "Telepathy  
philosophy" intended for Gossip support would look like. Given that  
it's perfectly within reason to implement the Telepathy support as  
another protocol implementation I think it's a win-win to continue  
the development in a back end.

> I respect the Gossip's developers' hesitancy in embracing Telepathy
> wholeheartedly. I don't think it's useful to speculate about the  
> relationship
> between Gossip and Telepathy in the future; we should wait for  
> working code
> before making decisions.

What I meant by "we are not going to switch to make Gossip a  
Telepathy client" is that we are not going to make the purpose of  
Gossip to be a front end of Telepathy.

That doesn't exclude a close coupling in the future when/if Telepathy  
is part of the GNOME stack. In fact, the benefits from it are  
appealing, I personally don't care about the ICQ/MSN support but  
rather the connection sharing as they implement an idea I've for years.

> However, there was at the Gnome summit a huge amount of excitement  
> at the
> prospect of being able to use Gossip as a Telepathy client, and  
> enthusiasm
> (including from a Gnome release manager) for making Gossip/ 
> Telepathy an
> official part of the Gnome release. That said, I agree that we  
> should only do
> that if/when we are ready.

Of course it's exciting, especially for users since they don't get  
the extra work of being part of GNOME. What I'm saying on the topic  
basically comes down to two things:

1) My opinion is that you shouldn't propose software for GNOME that  
isn't more or
    less ready for inclusion. The reason for this is that translators  
and
    documentation teams needs to start working in order to get their  
part done
    before the release. Given that the Gossip UI for multi protocol  
and Telepathy
    support is still in flux and there will most likely be a few  
things that comes
    up once people start using it for other protocols than Jabber.

2) Being in GNOME adds a bunch of restrictions and freeze dates that  
we are
    currently not comfortable with for Gossip. That's the main reason  
we haven't
    proposed it yet, as various people have been asking us to do so  
for a bunch of
    GNOME releases.

Anyway, this is already decided and no need to be re-iterated. None  
of the Gossip or Gossip-telepathy developers felt they wanted to  
propose it for 2.18.

Best Regards,
   Mikael Hallendal

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