retroshare plugin

[Mark Doliner]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Артем Вольхин <442935 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi! I want to want to participate in Google Summer of Code and write a
> plugin for pidgin based on http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ project. Is it
> possible?

(Disclaimer: I've never used RetroShare and I'm not very familiar with it.)

There are a few reasons I'm uneasy about adding a RetroShare protocol
plugin to Pidgin:

* We tend to shy away from adding features that aren't closely related
to IM.  File transfer is one such feature.  It's convenient to be able
to transfer files with people on your existing buddy list, and so file
transfer probably makes sense for the established popular protocols
(AIM, MSN, etc).  But it seems like RetroShare is primarily a file
transfer program, with IM and buddy list added as secondary feature.

One way to look at it is: Would people use RetroShare IM in Pidgin
even if they couldn't transfer files using Pidgin?  I suppose to might
be possible for Pidgin to handle the IM and buddy list aspects of
RetroShare, with a separate program handling file sharing--but that
could be a very complex project.

* We tend to avoid supporting protocols that aren't widely used.
Outside of this mailing list I've never heard anyone mention
RetroShare.  It seems like a niche protocol.  I suspect if we were to
accept a RetroShare project we would want the plugin to be distributed
independently of Pidgin.  But a small userbase also means there is a
small return on investment for a summer of code project.

--Mark