Please support Audio and Video on MSN (was: hi pidgin)

[David Woolley]

security root wrote:
> how are u, i hope your fine
> i want asking about plus color in pidgin why don't supported and 
> sound/webcam in msn

Part of this may be that the necessary information isn't forthcoming 
from Microsoft.  They are hostile to third party clients, and, in fact 
the current licence agreement for the official MSN Messenger client 
purports to forbid you from using unapproved clients, like Pidgin.

> I hope that ths interested in the development of these properties as 
> much as possible

I may be wrong, but my impression is that the core developers for Pidgin 
are not particularly interested in media support.  That would make sense 
to me as they are very different technologies from instant messaging.  I 
believe the exiting audio and video support only happened because of the 
Google Summer of Code, so you might be better off approaching Google to 
see if they will sponsor MSN support.

In the end though, as this is open source software, the way to get new 
features is to write them yourself and contribute them.  If you rely on 
others to develop them, you are ultimately at the mercy of what 
interests them.  Unlike a commercial product, even one provided at no 
extra charge, open source product development is largely driven by the 
developers' interests, not by what a marketing person thinks the mass 
public wants.

Actually, you can interwork audio with Windows Messenger using open 
source VoIP software.  It is just a SIP soft phone in this respect.  I 
haven't tried, but you may even be able to make incoming SIP calls to 
MSN Messenger, although it uses a proprietary protocol for outgoing 
calls, which effectively asks the peer to call it back, using SIP.

PS.  Especially if English is not your first language (but even if it 
is), you should not write deliberately incorrect English, e.g. "u" for 
"you", when making serious requests.  People will make an allowance for 
the use of a second language, but not for deliberate misuse.

-- 
David Woolley
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