Call for testing empathy

[Xavier Claessens]

On mar, 2008-08-12 at 11:50 +0100, Andrew Sayers wrote:
> Xavier Claessens wrote:
> > What do you mean by merging? The code is totally different, it's
> > impossible to merge together.
> > 
> > Xavier Claessens
> 
> I'm talking more about merging the projects than the codebases - finding
> a way that you can all work on a single project that would satisfy users
> and developers of both.  That would mean working out the unique selling
> points from both projects, and finding a way of developing an
> application that has the best of both.  For example, the ability to use
> (or just import) configuration files from older versions of Ekiga and
> Empathy, the best user interface elements of both,  automatic creation
> of an ekiga.net account, and so on.  I accept that you'd need to throw
> away a significant chunk of code from both projects, but to be honest,
> my experience has been that rewriting code isn't too time-consuming once
> you've made all the little decisions about how the program needs to work.
> 
> Ego-wise, it would probably also mean picking a new name for the joint
> project, because otherwise one project's members feel like they've been
> gobbled up by another project.  You could use that to your advantage
> though - calling the joint project something like "GNOME instant
> messaging" would give the impression of an official part of GNOME,
> integrated with the wider project.  That would help you sell other GNOME
> folk on using the library in their own apps.
> 
> I assume that you're planning to replace Ekiga as the default GNOME
> voice/video client in the long-run anyway, so it seems worthwhile to go
> through the pain of merging the projects now, rather duplicate each
> other's work until you're ready to have a bitter fight on a mailing list
> somewhere about which project lives and which dies.

I don't agree we should merge 2 great projects like Ekiga and Empathy.
For the same reason we don't merge KDE and Gnome, they are 2 different
project with some similar goals and they can just live in sane
concurrence as any other projects. Of course we can build bridges to
help users migrate from one to the other, but there is no reason to
merge as a single project.

Xavier Claessens.