Developer Request

[Michael Wolf]

I am interesting in hearing from a developer or someone familiar with the 
source code who can help me modify the source code of Gaim to update the 
protocol interface.

Or alternatively, someone who can help me modify Pidgin to restore the old 
Gaim platform of creating child windows which the user must close to allow 
for email notification; as well as modifying the code to restore the old 
look and feel of Gaim.


Please do not respond unless you can provide exactly what I am asking 
for.  And please do not ask why I am asking for what I am asking.  This 
community has demonstrated that it is not open to the needs of all of the 
potential users.  My hope here is that I can find a developer or someone 
familiar with the source code who can help me modify the source code of 
Pidgin to allow reversion to the old platform which performed better in 
that it didn't assume a user was always looking at the screen to see 
notifications of email; or modify Gaim so that it better interfaces with 
the new changes to YIM protocol.

And before anyone gets snippy with me again, please note that my efforts 
here can only serve to benefit the larger community of users.  I am unlike 
many people who don't like how the software was changed.  Rather than 
simply discarding it for another piece of software that does what I want 
and need it to do - as I know many people have done whom I have chatted 
with; I am attempting to make the community aware of the needs of 
users.  If this community cannot accept my methods for what they are, then 
I would strongly suggestion that you rethink the very foundation of your 
involvement in the open source community.  Understand that if I still had 
the capability to simply take apart the source code, modify it to my needs, 
and recompile it as I used to be able to do; I wouldn't be here asking for 
help, I'd be doing it, and releasing it as a modification under GNU.

Please also understand that if I cannot fix Pidgin or Gaim to work as I 
need it to, as it had previously worked for me for the past 4 years; then I 
will be forced to abandon Gaim for another client which DOES meet my 
needs.  Barring that, I may very well tap into my LabVIEW resources and 
experience and write a client for myself - I still have the infrastructure 
from when I was dabbling in YIM protocol, so I should be able to build on it.


By the way, I hope everyone here can consider how newcomers to the open 
source community might interpret the responses I have received thus 
far.  If the open source community fails to respond to the needs of users, 
and treats those who have needs different than what is "popular," consider 
that observers might not want to join such a community, and may well go off 
on their own and just out of spite, write their own software, and sell it 
to people who will appreciate it.  After all, what good is open source if 
it doesn't meet the needs of as broad a range of users as possible, but 
rather, like Microsoft, attempts to force people to follow the whims of the 
community?