Interview With BitlBee developers

xiando writes "LinuxReviews has interviewed the BitlBee developer team: Wilmer van der Gaast, Maurits Dijkstra and Jelmer Vernooij, with a word from former developer Sjoerd Hemminga. Find out what new cool features will be available in v1.0, what features have been implemented so far and what visions these bright young men have for the future of BitlBee and the Open Source community." BitlBee is a daemon which does the necessary black magic to translate IRC messages to those of various instant message networks, letting a user use emacs (for instance) as an MSN messenger client.

Flame Bait :)

[BottleCup]

I like what Sjoerd said in the last part of the article:

That's a dangerous question to answer. No matter what you answer, people will flame you. Good. I like a good flame war :-)

Oh great!

[byolinux]

Now there will be emacs vs vim flame wars on instant messenger!

When will animated_emoticons.el be released?

Re:Oh great!

[Vloris]

Now there will be emacs vs vim flame wars on instant messenger!
Probably not that flamy... the vim users know that vim is an editor, not an irc-client. It's only the emacs users wanting to put everything they can do into emacs itself. So, I don't see the flamewar here :-)

Re:Oh great!

[lintux]

You surely know that an IRC client for Vim [vim.org] exists for some time already? :-)

The Developers on IRC

[tijmentiming]

The BitlBee developers are cool too, I have loads of fun just by watching the conversations in #bitlbee @ irc.oftc.net. Sometimes, im funny too

Super Awesome Great

[Leroy_Brown242]

I've been using Bitlbee for some time now. It's the logical solution for me, as I can leave irssi running in a screen and never be disconnected from irc or my IM networks.

It really is a must for any unix geek who has to/wants to use IM netowkrs, but does not want to be bothered by official clients.

A feature I'd like

[magefile]

Just in case the devs are reading this ... I'd like the ability to have different conversations be separated by channel; I.e., talking to foo over AIM vs. bar over MSN vs. baz over Jabber, I'd like one conversation in #AIM_foo, one in #MSN_bar and one in #JABBER_baz. You could even have a new convo start that way: "/join #AIM_foo" would open up a new convo with foo.

Re:A feature I'd like

[lintux]

Yes, I'm reading. But can't you just use /query to open a separate conversation with the person?

Re:A feature I'd like

[magefile]

Ah. I had not been aware of that. Thanks.

Sexy Ascii

[Surye]

4. What new great features can we expect in the next BitlBee version? What lies ahead?
Webcam support! ;-)

aalib [sourceforge.net]? Oh man how awesome would that be, camwhores in ascii. But on a more serious note, well, actually, I doubt his was on a serious note ;)

Re:Sexy Ascii

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Or even libcaca [zoy.org] for color ASCII goodness! ;)

It's JUST WRONG!

[renehollan]

...letting a user use emacs (for instance) as an MSN messenger client.

Radio shock Jock Howard Stern has a segment where he encourages pairs of sisters to compete (usually for cosmetic surgery like breast augmentation), by answering questions - wrong answers mean one has to successively disrobe the other until they are both naked, and then engage in fondling each other. The pseudo-incenstuous spoof is called "It's just wrong!".

This too, deserves that moniker.

Skype: If not now, When?

[ivi]

Skype has IM functionality... shouldn't this BitlBee
get some Skype functionality... someday?

Re:Skype: If not now, When?

[ivi]

I know... one more protocol to implement (P2P)

But why not look at this a upgrading the under-
lying technology?