FunPidgin: The result of an open source instant messaging spat

Funpidgin


So a funny thing happened on the way to Pidgin 2.4.1. The developers of the open source, cross-platform, multi-chat protocol client recently implemented a new feature. When you're typing in a text box, it will start out just large enough for a few lines of text. And if your message gets longer, it will automatically resize. Pretty cool, right?


But the developers decided to eliminate the ability to change the text box manually. And that led to a rather intense debate in the Pidgin community. And the result is that there are now two branches of Pidgin. There's the "official" build which lacks image resizing because the developers didn't want to back down or even offer the option of changing the default behavior with a plugin. And there's the new Funpidgin build which has the same default text box behavior as Pidgin, but allows you to manually change text box sizes via a plugin.


We're going to ignore the question of which version is actually more "fun," and just point out that Funpidgin can basically do everything that Pidgin can, plus you can resize the text box manually. Funpidgin also has a few other features that Pidgin lacks, like the ability to adjust buddy icon display sizes.



[Via: Ubuntu Unleashed ]
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