A true polyglot

Pidgin 2.0

Developer: Pidgin Community (Project site)

Platforms supported: Linux, Windows (Download page)

Price: Free

Pidgin 2.0, the latest version of the popular open-source instant messaging client formerly known as Gaim, is now available for download. After months of development and numerous beta releases, Pidgin 2.0 is finally ready. A significant improvement over the current 1.5.x series, Pidgin 2.0 includes several compelling features and usability enhancements. Last year, we looked at the second beta release and concluded that much work still needed to be done. Many of the problems we discovered in the early Gaim 2.0 betas have since been resolved. The official Pidgin 2.0 release, available for download from the Pidgin web site, provides an impressive level of quality and reliability.

Pidgin 2.0 is a highly extensible and cohesive platform for multiprotocol Internet communication that includes broad support for essential instant messaging features and common protocols. Rigged with a versatile plug-in system and an assortment of advanced features, Pidgin 2.0 is capable of competing with commercial instant messaging applications like Trillian Pro. Although Pidgin 2.0 has evolved into a robust and powerful program, the absence of voice and video chat features and a few minor weaknesses in the user interface detract from its usefulness and illuminate the need for additional work as development on the 2.x series progresses.

For this review, I compiled Pidgin 2.0 beta 7 using a tarball from SourceForge (Beta 7 is identical to 2.0 except for some very minor bug fixes). Out of the box, my Pidgin 2.0 build includes support for AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN, QQ, SIMPLE, Yahoo, and Zephyr. I also compiled in support for spellcheck, D-Bus, and Perl scripting. I tried to enable the compile-time Mono option, but lacked the proper dependencies.

A bird by any other name



We talked to Pidgin project leader Sean Egan about Gaim's unexpected name change. After AOL repeatedly targeted individual Gaim developers with legal threats, major Gaim contributors created the Instant Messaging Freedom Corporation to manage the legal issues and open settlement negotiations with AOL. In order to accommodate the negotiations, Gaim developers had to keep the ongoing legal discussions private and refrain from creating any non-beta Gaim 2.0 releases. A settlement was finally reached, but one of the conditions necessitated renaming Gaim. After much discussion, the Gaim developers decided to call the program Pidgin. "We like the name," Egan told me. "It was the second choice we all really liked. We were thinking up linguistic terms, and someone mentioned Pidgin. Another developer commented that 'corrupted language' may not be the best thing to associate yourself with, to which another pointed out something along the lines of 'have you ever SEEN people talk on IM?'"

"We all felt that was a pretty valid point, so the name stuck," continued Egan. "It's a corrupted language, much like that used by IM users, it's caused by people talking different languages (or protocols) with each other, and it sounds like a bird known for carrying messages across long distances."

The underlying messaging infrastructure developed for Gaim, originally called libgaim, has been renamed to libpurple, and Gaim's text-based instant messaging interface has been renamed Finch. Egan comments, "With Adium being represented as a duck, Pidgin as a pigeon, and Finch as a finch, we've set a pattern that libpurple clients are all birds."