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Communications Software The Internet

Gaim Forks To Get Voice And Video Support 301

Posted by timothy from the run-for-the-money dept.
RAMMS+EIN writes "Everyone's favorite instant messenger, Gaim, has recently been forked. The new gaim-vv project aims to provide voice and video chat support, which will eventually be backported into the main branch." Nice to see an amicable fork; it sounds like this will mean competition for GnomeMeeting.
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Gaim Forks To Get Voice And Video Support More

Gaim Forks To Get Voice And Video Support

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  • Too many choices (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bonch ( 38532 )
    Nice to see an amicable fork; it sounds like this will mean competition for GnomeMeeting.

    Great, more "competition." See my sig.

    • Re:Too many choices (Score:5, Informative)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:20AM (#8963452) Homepage Journal
      Right, people don't want to be swamped with options, but they do want to have voice and video chat.

      The comment about GnomeMeeting is quite inaccurate, as GnomeMeeting uses the H.323 protocol, which was used by Netmeeting and old versions of MSN Messenger, but is not used by any messengers these days. What gaim-vv aims to provide is voice and video chat with AIM/iChat, MSN, Yahoo, etc, that is, the protocols that people actually _use_.

      • Re:Too many choices (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:15AM (#8963642) Homepage Journal
        There is nothing wrong with H.323. It's just that the IM companies like to use their own protocols so they can lock users in. I'd like to see support for all of those protocols and H.323.
        • I'm sorry, H.323 is a complete pile of horse nuggets, and I say that as someone who uses it. I have to accept connections on 12 different tcp ports on my firewall, and open up 12 different udp ports at the same time. And support about 10 different audio codecs and probably a similar number of video codecs.

          I can only do this on one PC on my home network because I haven't got a special h.323-friendly firewall.

          I have to know how to set my firewall up in the first place, if it comes to that.

          If you want to
        • I'd like to see support for all of those protocols and H.323.

          s/H\.323/SIP/;

          While not being an ideal solution either, SIP is much more NAT-friendly than H.323 and has an increasing number of hardware phones available.

      • Re:Too many choices (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hak1du ( 761835 )
        What gaim-vv aims to provide is voice and video chat with AIM/iChat, MSN, Yahoo, etc, that is, the protocols that people actually _use_.

        Those are also the protocols that are under the control of companies with their own financial interests. How long do you think those companies are going to provide access to open source clients when those services don't fit into their business plan and stop looking like attractive business propositions anymore?

        GnomeMeeting and H.323 are easy to use. They talk to existi
        • "This service may be discontinued or become unavailable without warning any day. [OK?]"
          You could say the same for any closed-source software.

          • Re:Too many choices (Score:4, Insightful)

            by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @04:32AM (#8963795) Journal
            The situation is similar, and it's a reason to avoid closed-source software, but it's not quite the same. Most closed-source software keeps running even if is discontinued. So, you can keep running WordPerfect on DOS for years if you like, until the hardware breaks or you get tired of it. With a proprietary service, things can stop working without warning from one day to the next.
        • Oh, I very much agree with you that we should go for open standards. That's why I use IRC for chatting. :-) However, supporting the protocols that the major IM networks use is going to feel very good to a lot of people.

      • Re:Too many choices (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hachete ( 473378 )
        We need more choice, but only choices which are not clones of each other. Look at MySQL - it's made good not by being a clone of Oracle but by figuring out the bits people want then backfilling in the rest as it goes along.

        h

    • Re:Too many choices (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sglane81 ( 230749 )
      Competition drives innovation.

    • Re:Too many choices (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sirsnork ( 530512 )
      The way I see this fork is basically like an unstable branch of the linux kernel. This way they can just work on the video and voice without messing up gaims normal development and without having to work out why something has broken because someone else applied a patch for something unrelated that breaks it. This way the only patches applied with be fore video and voice, and once thats working properly they can drop it into the current devel branch and make it work

    • Re:Too many choices (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Joe Tie. ( 567096 )
      Great, more "competition." See my sig.

      What your sig gets wrong though is that there is no generic lump of 'people'. I'm a person, and I do want an endless amount of choices. It's one of the reasons I use Linux. Now if your sig read 'the average computer user considering using Linux dosn't want an endless amount of choices', then I'd agree. And I'd also not really care what they want. We've got a high enough user base to get the occasional port of games, and 3D drivers - that's more than enough for what I

  • I wish... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JThundley ( 631154 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:16AM (#8963437)
    I just wish the devs would make something that they could be proud to call a 1.0 release.
    But then again, this software is their gift to me, I have no room to bitch :)

    • Re:I wish... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:43AM (#8963554) Homepage Journal
      Honestly, they should have called it 1.0 somewhere around 0.55. That version was stable and did everything it needed to do. The port to GTK2 should have been 2.x; I think the change is major enough to bump up the major version number.

  • good thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jangell ( 633044 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:22AM (#8963461)
    The way I look at it, this could be a very good thing.. From what I've witnessed currently the gaim development team is busy with many things, and cannot focus on one or two certain features.

    Now that It has forked off the developers that are interested in this will have the time to do the one thing they WANT to do, not a bunch of others.

    The way I look at it, it is kind of like the introduction of the assembly line, a group will be very skilled at one task and not be working on and assembleing all the other features.

    Quite frankly, This is one feature gaim is really lacking. With the introduction of broadband services in the home, video and voice is extremely popular.

    It's hard to get someone to try linux when their main tasks cannot be performed.

    This is a very good thing.

    • Re:good thing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      Of course, Linux has been able to do voice chat and video chat for a long time. I mean, there's speakfreely, rat, GnomeMeeting, ophone, etc, and you can serve streaming MPEGs or such, which is what I used to do.

      • Re:good thing (Score:4, Informative)

        by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:38AM (#8963535)
        Of course, Linux has been able to do voice chat and video chat for a long time. I mean, there's speakfreely, rat, GnomeMeeting, ophone, etc, and you can serve streaming MPEGs or such, which is what I used to do.

        Yes. However there's competiting formats for realtime video chat right now... and the so called "open standards" seem to be ignored. GAIM's point is to emulate the proprietary formats that haven't been released for Linux yet.
        • Actually, MSN messenger uses SIP for its audio and video functionality, which IS an open format. It's just not supported in a way yet that will interoperate with a messenger client on linux.

          And netmeeting uses open and standardised formats too, which is the whole reason gnomemeeting interoperates with windows.

  • iChat AV / AIM Video Chat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by metalligoth ( 672285 ) <metalligoth.gmail@com> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:24AM (#8963476)
    Is it compatible with Apple's iChat AV / AIM's video and audio chatting?

    If so, that would most certainly rule. iChat AV is awesome, but chatting on the Windows AIM client restricts one to a tiny window, whereas with iChat you can take up the whole screen if you want.

    Also, I have lots of x86 using friends that hate booting into Windows from Linux just to use advertising-ridden AIM.

    • Re:iChat AV / AIM Video Chat (Score:5, Informative)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:34AM (#8963520) Homepage Journal
      ``Is it compatible with Apple's iChat AV / AIM's video and audio chatting?''

      That's the idea. However, an idea is all there is for now. AFAIK, all major IMs use proprietary protocols for voice and video that have not been reverse engineered yet.
      • Don't know about iChat, but MSN Messenger uses completely interoperable SIP. I even used MSN Messenger as a client to access Free World Dial-up (FWD). Or was it Windows Messenger? Anyway, it was the client installed by default in Windows XP.

        Robert
        • MSN messenger does use SIP. I've used to to connect to a private sip server and talk to a cisco IP phone, and even, via a cisco router with dsp card, to a PSTN phone.

          I don't know a massive amount about sip, does it take care of the text messaging as well as audio/video? if so, can one not get aim and msn to intercommunicate somehow? at the end of the day, most people want a big single unified IM network where they can use the account and client they prefer, and speak to all of their friends.

          dave

    • Re:iChat AV / AIM Video Chat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:55AM (#8963729) Journal
      Also, I have lots of x86 using friends that hate booting into Windows from Linux just to use advertising-ridden AIM.

      The ads are part of their business model. If lots of people switch to using open, ad-free clients, they'll eventually just decide to keep those clients from connecting. That's the trouble with using software that relies on proprietary protocols and proprietary servers.

      I know it's less convenient, but try to get your friends to use chatting (in particular, video chatting) using open protocols. There are technically perfectly good choices: H.323, Jabber, etc. People just have to use them more. And the longer AIM becomes entrenched, the harder it will get to change.

      Just imaging what E-mail would be like if it had started like chatting--with AOL, Microsoft, and a few others controling the servers and the infrastructure. Ultimately, ISPs should provide IM servers just like they provide mail servers.
      • Email did not used to be as open as it is today. Although many academic and business systems were not much different, it was often a hassle to communicate between different systems. Even ten years ago, my college was using a system called "All-In-One", and to send something off campus, you had to prefix the address it with some bizarre code, because for some reason the computer couldn't figure it out otherwise. I think that some early internet services like compuserve and prodigy were even more disinteres
        • Email did not used to be as open as it is today. Although many academic and business systems were not much different, it was often a hassle to communicate between different systems. Even ten years ago, my college was using a system called "All-In-One", and to send something off campus, you had to prefix the address it with some bizarre code, because for some reason the computer couldn't figure it out otherwise.

          What does that have to do with it being open? Yes, we used to have UUCP, Bitnet, DECnet, ARPAne

  • Uh oh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by larley ( 736136 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:26AM (#8963487)
    I just realized. Seeing as the true geeks use open source and all, that'll just give us one less reason to go out and be social... As soon as they develop a usb-automated back scratcher and/or fridge/microwave, I'm not leaving the house!

  • GAIM UI (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BESTouff ( 531293 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:26AM (#8963488)
    That's nice, I hope they'll take GnomeMeeting's UI as an example. Gaim'UI sucks big time : it has tons of windows opening for no reason, taking the focus (and the keyboard input) from what you were previously doing. Way too much intrusive if you ask me.
    • uncheck the raise windows on events and install the tray icon plugin then. I still like Trillian's UI better though.
    • Gaim'UI sucks big time : it has tons of windows opening for no reason, taking the focus (and the keyboard input) from what you were previously doing. Way too much intrusive if you ask me.

      They're just trying to emulate AIM... That description makes it sound like they're getting that part right.

    • Re:GAIM UI (Score:4, Informative)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:41AM (#8963547) Homepage Journal
      Use the preferences, dude.

      I personally thing Gaim has one of the _nicest_ UIs around. I group all chats and conversations in one tabbed window, so that I never have to worry about things popping up again.

      Want chats in a separate window? Click the checkbox. Want every conversation in a separate window, but all chats in one tabbed window? It can be done. Pretty much any imaginable combination is possible.
    • Gaim'UI sucks big time : it has tons of windows opening for no reason

      What are you talking about? It has windows opening because people are sending you IMs.

      By default, Gaim puts all chats into one tabbed window now. So actually there are only 2 windows, your buddy list, and your chats.

      Compare this with iChat, which does indeed have the worst UI of any IM client. (If someone sends you an IM, you get that little notification window that pops up, and stays *ABOVE* all other windows until you hit Reply).
      • This is probably going to come off as another one of those annoying "leap to Apple's defense at all costs!" posts, but what the hell.

        It's true that iChat's incoming IM windows pop up on top of all your other windows, but it's not a nuisance at all. It's ghosted out, for one thing, so you can tell it's not a "real" window, and it doesn't take focus away from anything else you're working on. If you want it to obey normal stacking order, just click on it (making it a "normal" window) and then click back on wh
  • I don't think that this represents any kind of competition at all.

    You can't connect to cams via AIM/Yahoo with gnomemeeting/netmeeting.

    It's a different program, with a different aim.

  • Recent problems with Gaim (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:28AM (#8963493) Journal
    We use Gaim to communicate with the offshore part of the team and I have to say I couldn't really miss it. But I did have to, since they didn't react to the changes that Yahoo required from clients. It took a looooong time (almost three months) for Gaim to get fixed. Although we use Yahoo's network, Yahoo's own Linux client doesn't run in Xinerama (multihead) mode. The last six weeks, an unofficial patch floated around which had its own problems but at least a connection was made. Only this week, a new release was done which solved all problems.

    • Re:Recent problems with Gaim (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mkamp ( 628400 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:14AM (#8963639)
      If you want a closed group like for team communication, why don't you go for jabber? You could setup your own server in seconds (at least with debian: apt-get install jabber), have your own rooms and don't have to bother too much about the internet and firewalls.

      It is truly open source. That includes the protocol, most client-apis, most clients and most servers.
      Furthermore the core is already in IETF RFCs.

      No need to worry about vendors checking the protocols anymore and a wide variety of clients to use.

      Watch out, your favorite IDE might even get a plug-in for IMing.
      • If you want a closed group like for team communication, why don't you go for jabber?

        It's a good idea, BUT... We're at the customer site behind a firewall. The offshore team is on our company network, which doesn't have a net connection at all except for a HTTP proxy. Where would I want to set up a server?...

        Yeah VPN blahblah but due to fscking corporate inertia this took a LONG time and only then it was figured out that it was too darn slow from India to Europe. Bizarre huh?

      • Jabber is nice, but I gave up on it for two reasons:

        - The msn plugin, crucial to me since everyone I know is on that network, never worked quite right. Either it was outright broken, or unstable.

        - Every single jabber client is horrible UI-wise. The whole nomenclature is needlessly obfuscated. "Signing up for transports" ? What the hell is that? The whole transport scheme seems poorly thought out UI-wise, no matter how well-designed it is technologically.
    • It nicely illustrates the pitfalls of using proprietary formats/protocols. If you had used IRC or Jabber there wouldn't have been a problem.

  • another fork? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by master0ne ( 655374 )
    and this makes how many forks of gaim now? lets see we have gaim, ayttm, everybuddy, and gaim-vv, are there any im missing? sounds like a poll to me... "whats your favorite linux messanger client? aim, yahoo, ayttm, everybuddy, gaim, gaim-vv, cowboy neal's all-in-one messanger. ytalk, or i dont chat you insensitive clod!"

    anyway in all seriousness ayttm (are you talking to me) look it up on freshmeat (as im too lazy/tired to link it) already has rudimentry yahoo webcam support, however it is still lacking,

    • Re:another fork? (Score:5, Informative)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:47AM (#8963568) Homepage Journal
      I may be wrong, but AFAIK ayttm is a everybuddy fork and everybuddy is not based on the Gaim codebase. They are very similar, though. Traditionally, eb has had the features and Gaim the stability. I wish they would cooperate more...

    • Re:another fork? (Score:3, Informative)

      by camh ( 32881 )
      The word fork is being a bit overused lately because some high profile projects have forked recently.
      This is not a fork of gaim - since it is planned to merge the changes back into gaim, it is just a branch. Branches are quite common when you want to add substantial features to a program, because it isolates those new features from the mainline until it is ready, and development of minor features can continue on the mainline.
      You can call it a fork if you want, but I think that is just sensationalising what

  • Woot! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:30AM (#8963503)
    Exciting news indeed.

    Gaim is the only decent AIM client for I've run across for Windows - the official client is utter crap, and Trillian is bloated payware. Still, some of my less-technically-inclined friends refuse to use Gaim, citing the fact that it doesn't have enough cool features and "bling bling". With cool new features like these, I have more ammunition in my battle to get people to switch ;p

    Now, if only the Gaim folks would get their act together on MSN support ...
    • Gaim is the only decent AIM client for I've run across for Windows - the official client is utter crap, and Trillian is bloated payware.

      I stopped using Trillian when they went to the pay model. I then tried to go all-linux on the desktop, but found that my EQ addiction could not be curbed, and had to return to Windows for that...and Gaim for Windows then became my IM client of choice.

      Now, if only the Gaim folks would get their act together on MSN support ...

      Not sure what you're meaning here though, I

    • Re:Woot! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      well, this is certainly should be modded "Opinion" and not anything nearing fact...

      I installed Gaim for W32 just a few minutes ago. I had installed in a while back and figured it must have gotten better. It had! I was actually impressed with the look and feel that it had.

      Unfortunately it certainly wasn't on par with the official Windows client I regularly use...

      The client doesn't have a buddy list that starts left justified in the window. There is a large gap between the left side and where the buddy
    • I disagree. I like Trillian (v0.74h -- free version) more than Gaim and I don't think it is crap. It's nice. If Trillian didn't exist, I would use Gaim. I wished Trillian existed for MacOS X and Linux natively.
  • Does anyone know what voice/video protocols? They should really start by implementing Yahoo/AIM/MSN yahoo and voice functions, if they are going to further fracture the way-too-many-standards-already arena of instant messenger video ... its a waste of their time.

    I think libyahoo2 already has voice/video implemented, but GAIM uses an older library.

    • if they are going to further fracture the way-too-many-standards-already arena of instant messenger video

      That's exactly the trouble: AIM, Yahoo! IM, and MSN Messenger are not "standards", they are commercial services. If they were standards, then implementing them would be much less of a problem.

      However, there are standards for audio and video conferencing, and GnomeMeeting implements them, along with NetMeeting, iChat, and lots and lots of other software and hardware. People just need to be smart eno
  • For Windows, Skype [skype.com] is a really good over-internet voice chat program. It uses P2P, and the quality you get is really good (atleast if your friend is on a LAN :P, haven't tried it outside the college LAN yet). Version 0.97 is showing some problems. Still, something like this would be really cool on Linux ...

    • Re:Skype? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ChiralSoftware ( 743411 )
      Skype for Linux is on its way, and it can't be here soon enough for me. If you look on their site in the jobs section, they are looking for a Linux/QT programmer. Older versions of Skype ran under Wine, but apparently they are now doing some code relocation/decryption thing that breaks with Wine, so we just have to wait for the official Linux client. And if it's Qt, it will look good and integrate nicely with Suse 9.1 which is also almost here...

      ----------
      Create a WAP server [chiralsoftware.net]

    • To me, the P2P aspect is the true killer feature of Skype. All you have to do is to install the software, register an account, and you're good to go.

      We've installed Skype on a number of boxes, worked every time so far, and the quality is really good (even outside LAN).

      The drawback is that - according to the FAQ - Skype uses a proprietary protocol :( And after the beta, certain (yet unnamed) add-on features will cost money.

      I, for one, like Skype and I am waiting for the Linux client so I can start s

  • iChat uses H.263 (Score:5, Informative)

    by FreeHeel ( 620639 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @02:48AM (#8963573)
    from Apple [apple.com]:

    iChat AV uses the industry-standard H.263 video codec and advanced pre- and post-processing techniques to deliver picture-perfect video. It uses the sophisticated technologies built into QuickTime to compress the video and audio while maintaining rich detail, natural colors, and smooth video over any 100-Kbps or faster Internet connection. Specific technologies include:

    • Spatial anisotropic diffusion to maintain edge detail and sharpness while reducing unnecessary digital "noise."
    • Temporal noise reduction to average out noise between video frames while avoiding motion blurring.
    • Post-filtering of the received video to avoid blockiness and ringing artifacts.

    iChat AV uses a sophisticated digital audio codec to deliver the same crystal-clear audio quality that you expect when you use a typical landline telephone. The fullduplex technology built into iChat AV lets you have natural conversations, just as with the advanced speakerphones found in conference boardrooms. Most other solutions force users to talk one at a time, providing an experience more akin to talking on a CB radio.

    Apple has recently announced support for H.264 [macworld.com], which is a good thing

  • When is a project forked? And when is it a branch? With the way forking is played in newssites nowadays, it seems to connote a difference of opinions and therefore the need to go separate ways. Most of the time, however, code is just branched in order to perform some development on a particular feature with the intent to merge the two branches together eventually.

    The question in my mind is: what were the circumstances for the creation of the new source tree? Was it a branch (in which case the term amicable

  • Gaim-vv (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:13AM (#8963636)
    Gaim-vv is really more of an offsite branch of Gaim than a fork.

    From the sf project page:
    A friendly fork of Gaim (http://gaim.sf.net) to concentrate on video and voice support, which will eventually be backported

    Basicly, I wrote a patch based on some code from libyahoo2 for Gaim to allow viewing other people's webcams. Filamoon independently had done some on msn voice and video related stuff. We decided to start a separate sourceforge project so we could collaborate and stuff.

    Eventually we hope to merge it into Gaim proper. Currently it's in a state where it may be useful to users, but not in a state where it can be merged into Gaim. It breaks the core/ui split for example. It uses threads for some things. There's not really any shared code between the Yahoo! and MSN related features yet.

    There are no AIM, iChat, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Napster, Zephyr, etc, video or voice features. Someone wishing to work on that should contact us and start coding.

    I don't consider gaim-vv to be in competition with any other project, GnomeMeeting or otherwise.

  • This is not a fork. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Craig Davison ( 37723 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:31AM (#8963672)
    It's a branch of the project with AV support. A fork is an entirely new project set off in a new direction from the original codebase. Branches are often created and merged in a development cycle.
    </rant>

  • wrong project (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pdamoc ( 771461 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:34AM (#8963676) Homepage
    this shouldn't have been a fork in Gaim but rather a joint venture between developers of IM software to create a library or a set of libraries that will handle the voice and video protocols, this way all the IM software would have benefit.
  • It would be nice if the work done in this forked project could be eventually integrated into Adium, seeing as how it's based off of GAIM's source. My one regret of switching from iChat to Adium is it's lack of "vv". So if I want to do some "vv" I have to switch back to iChat.

  • not at all the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:42AM (#8963700) Journal
    GnomeMeeting provides standards-based (H.323 and others) video conferencing, the same protocol that is used by many hardware video conferencing system. There are open server implementations that work with GnomeMeeting (e.g., openh323.org). You get full control over your data, your privacy, your CODECs, and your security. And using GnomeMeeting can be as simple as giving the host name of your counterpart.

    The "chat" video conferencing add-ons from AOL, Yahoo!, etc., on the other hand, are tied into a proprietary server infrastructure. Using them means that you are becoming dependent on that server infrastructure and that you let those companies control when and how you can use their chat facilities. For example, AOL could just decide to shut down their servers, exclude you from it, or change the way they encode audio or video.

    GAIM is, of course, multi-protocol. So, if the GAIM video chat effort does its job right, you should end up with an application that can subsume GnomeMeeting functionality while also giving you access to the proprietary chat networks. But you should always remember that using AIM or Yahoo! for video (just like for chatting) means that you can lose the service at any time, in particular when you are using an open source client to connect.
    • The "chat" video conferencing add-ons from AOL, Yahoo!, etc., on the other hand, are tied into a proprietary server infrastructure.

      Actually, most of them use SIP in a peer to peer fashion. There's no server dependancy with SIP.

  • i'm the one (Score:4, Informative)

    by radoni ( 267396 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @03:43AM (#8963702)
    supposed to be adding video transmit support for y! webcam. my computers (yes plural) recently had a meltdown of some kind. don't hold your breath.

    those who are interested, i'm sure the help would be welcomed. scope is video and voice. contact marv (#gaim / freenode)

    of note is the libj2k completely GNU GPL jpeg2000 library implementation, which avoids the questionably-incompatible licensing and free-as-in-freedom issues of libjasper.

    there's a lot of msn/linphone work in there too.

    for those of you have worked on patching Direct IM images to work again, gaim-vv would be the place to get that committed. hint, hint.

    cheers.

  • ah, wonderful... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by boola-boola ( 586978 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @04:27AM (#8963786)
    This is one feature I've been waiting for. Hopefully it will be compatible with iChat AV, since that is my main method of voice chatting over the internet.

    However, to be honest, I think the one feature GAIM _really_ needs is multithreading. For instance, when I've got multiple windows open, and one (or multiple ones) are using the gaim-encryption plugin, all the other windows/conversations have to wait for _one_ conversation to finish decrypting/encrypting the message before the rest will continue. It's highly annoying, and since most networking libraries are inherently multithreaded, it doesn't seem like it should be a problem. I'm hoping someone can put that in, soon, as I'm pretty sure it will alleviate some of GAIM's performance issues as well. Hell, I can even help debug the threading on the code level, if someone is willing to start a fork. ;-) (hint hint)

  • Since I run Debian... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Glowing Fish ( 155236 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @05:27AM (#8963893) Homepage
    Since I run Debian, I should read Slashdot from a year or so ago, to read about all the latest programs I can apt-get.
  • FY [slightly OT] I,

    There's a mature VOIP multi-platform already out there. Now under new management, but still Free.

    Speak-Freely [sf.net]

    linux/unix \ MS windows

    It rocks. Much lighter than GnomeMeeting, but full featured multi codec + strong encryption.

    Linux people get be sure to get the Tcl/Tk GUI...

  • I'm away from my linny box right now so I can't test this out myself, but What is the Difference between Gaim & Kopete?

    I recell trying Gaim a few months back, but couldn't connect correctly to all the IM services that I needed. So, I have been using Kopete since then.

  • More features (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @11:27AM (#8965034) Journal
    Hey devs! How about file send and receive and display pictures for all protocols, please? Pretty please?

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