SIPE/XMPP/VV/etc. and external contributions

[Ethan Blanton]

All,

Niklas et al. asked a while back about the status of Pidgin 3, and we
had some brief discussions both here and in devel at cpi about the status
of 3.0, 2.11, etc.  As part of these discussions, I renewed a
conversation Niklas had had some time ago about getting them unstuck.
I think the work they are doing to bring VV to SIPE and improve the VV
stack for XMPP and other protocols is something we should be
supporting; I know Daniel has reviewed and commented on some of their
patches, but I'm not sure if anyone else has.  I know I haven't, and I
don't know when I will, because I simply don't have time.  That's
where this email comes from.

We're at a point in this project were developer energy is at a
premium.  This team represents external energy that I would hate to
see lost because we don't have the energy to review everything they
do.

With that in mind, I'd like to propose that we give commit access to
someone from their team, and let them commit directly to a branch on
pidgin.im.  The goal would be to eventually having them staging and
moving their commits directly to default/release-2.x.y to provide
improvements and extensions that they can use and that can be adopted
by other protocols in a more timely fashion.  Niklas has suggested
that Jakub (one of the SIPE maintainers) would be a good contact for
that.

I want to see whatever of their changes are ready and API-appropriate
moved into 2.x.y for a 2.11.0 release sooner rather than later, and I
am hopeful that they can help us get VV 3.0-ready on the default
branch as part of their refining process.

Thoughts?  (If you don't want to send them to the group, feel free to
send them directly to me.)

Ethan