[Cabal] Maintaining/Lead developing

[Evan Schoenberg]

On Dec 4, 2006, at 8:52 PM, Sean Egan wrote:

> Additionally, since we're looking to further the wedge between the
> Pidgin and Pidgin-text UIs and the libpurple library, do we want to
> appoint different leads for the different projects? On the one hand,
> it seems like the two go so hand-in-hand, that it makes little sense
> to split them up like that. On the other hand, perhaps the two going
> so hand-in-hand is a hinderence to other UI's that don't have that
> benefit.

A year and a half ago, were such a split even in the realm of  
feasibility, I would have strongly supported a split, I think --  
there was a definite problem that changes were regularly made at the  
level of the core and of the prpls which were 100% targeted at the  
Gaim UI and which increased rather than decreased burden on other UIs  
and portability of the nascent library.

That isn't the case now -- everyone with commit access seems fully in  
support of a clean core/UI split, and responses to my requests and  
questions angled toward libgaim-as-a-library have been met with  
universal helpfulness.  I don't feel that there are any areas in  
which the priorities of pidgin and libpurple differ at present.  We  
want a perfectly stable, highly featureful libpurple, and obviously  
pidgin needs that.  Although many development efforts focused on  
pidgin don't have an impact on libpurple -- the status selector in  
the buddy list, for example -- I don't think that were different  
people in charge of the two projects we'd see resources allocated  
differently or different priorities set, because most people who are  
contributing to libpurple are doing so because of its impact on pidgin.

So for now, a unified project with a single lead developer makes  
sense, I think.  Looking forward, especially if others -- perhaps  
other Adium developers, Meebo guys, Proteus developers if that  
project is ever resurrected, and so on -- are interested in  
developing for libpurple specifically, being able to grant the commit  
bit for just that area could be good, though (1) an honor system  
could work just as well and (2) this obviously doesn't require a  
separate lead or separate project, so is out of scope of the discussion.

-Evan
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