[Cabal] [Gaim-devel] Gaim, Google Talk, and prpls

[Luke Schierer]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 08:09:31PM -0500, Etan Reisner wrote:
> 
> Personally, I would rather someone didn't use gaim than go around 
> thinking Google had their own protocol, because I don't care what sort 
> of mindshare (to use a fun (and old?) buzzword) gaim has but I do care 
> what sort of mindshare jabber/xmpp has, because while I don't need to be 
> acknowledged for the work I do on gaim, I think the people who have put 
> long hours into working on xmpp should be acknowledged, and I think 
> letting people say "Oh good, gaim supports that really cool protocol 
> from Google, those Google guys are awesome" without also saying (or at 
> least knowing) that Google is using an open, standard protocol.
> 
> I realize I may very well be in the minority on this, and while I will 
> not be happy with a change, I certainly won't storm off in a huff over 
> it or anything.
> 

Taking this off list a second to mention a side point.  We have a jabber
server at pidgin.im now.  Many of the people trying to reach us on it
will be using gtalk accounts.

The primary thing preventing gtalk users from realizing that they are
using xmpp is the fact that they do not need to know it.  I will venture
to guess that most of them never use it to talk to anyone other than
other gtalk users.  I KNOW that this is true for most of the people I
know in real life using gtalk.  

When a user wants to reach us, and realizes that gtalk is compatable
with the xmpp server that is pidgin.im's jabber server, we will have
achieved something.  It is a much smaller step from "gtalk is compatable
with xmpp" to "gtalk is xmpp" than it is to skip directly to "gtalk is
xmpp even though that really means nothing to you and you really don't
care because it Just Works, and you have no (present) use for the
benefits that it being xmpp gives you"

Interestingly this benefit really remains if we split gtalk and jabber.
It grows as we (*shudder*) add users trying to reach us.

luke