OTR in Pidgin?

[Casey Ho]

As the survey results indicated, encrypted IM support is as popular as
VV support [1].

How do you all feel about including the OTR plugin by default in Pidgin?

While encryption is made possible by the OTR and pidgin-encryption
plugins, both survey responses and some personal conversations I had
indicated it's not widespread enough.  Basically it doesn't make sense
to install OTR unless your friends are using it too.

I mention the OTR plugin specifically because Adium already installs
it by default, it has the best protections out of the available
plugins, and the code is reasonably well written (only the tabs/spaces
are inconsistent).  I also took some time to test things today and it
worked well without any serious glitches.

Possible pitfall: while most users mentioned OTR, there are some who
wanted XMPP/GPG encryption support, which is different.

I'd be willing to undertake this, as I have used encryption with a
handful of other friends for several years now.  Having it be more
widespread would definitely increase the utility.

-Casey

[1] One key difference- people switch back to another client to use
video whereas they wouldn't for encryption.