Inclusion of MXit plugin into Pidgin

[Mark Doliner]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Francois Botha<igitur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Francois Botha <igitur at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>> The current version of the 'official' MXit plugin displays advertisements
>> when you login. Is aligned with Pidgin's policies?
>> Not sure if this list supports attachments, but I'll try to attach a
>> screenshot.
>> regards,
>> Francois
>
> Hi guys,
>
> Sorry to bug you about this, but I'm really curious about the Pidgin
> policies regarding advertisement.
>
> To be honest, this is the single most annoying feature of the MXit plugin
> and I hope you would back me in saying that advertisements should be removed
> before the plugin gets included in the standard Pidgin package.

Yes this is indeed an interesting question.  Thank you for Francois
for bringing it up.  There is no official or unofficial Pidgin policy
regarding advertisements.  Regardless of whatever we decide here,
obviously anyone would be free to alter the source code to remove this
advertisement.

I don't believe anyone has ever tried adding advertising into Pidgin,
so we've never discussed it.  Most of our protocols are developed by
many individual developers over a long period of time and are
unsupported by any commercial entity.

This protocol plugin is different in that it was developed by MXit and
would be in large by maintained by them.  Because of that I'm ok
leaving the advertising in in our officially sanctioned
Pidgin/libpurple.

I think I tend to have a more corporate-friendly mindset than other
devs.  I'm interested in hearing the opinions of other developers and
Pieter.

-Mark