Fallback plan if Empathy isn't ready for Karmic?

[Andrew Sayers]

There's currently a big push to make Empathy the default IM client in 
Karmic, even though the version in Jaunty still has grave issues - for 
example, MSN doesn't work at all for me[1].

The plan is to make sure that these bugs are all fixed in time for 
Karmic, but what's the backup plan if there are still showstoppers when 
the release starts to get closer?  More precisely, when, where and how 
should people speak up if Empathy still has showstopping bugs?

Obviously it would be undesirable to try retrofitting Pidgin back in 
after the feature freeze, but I could see arguments for requiring 
notification earlier (default apps need more time) or later (Pidgin's 
already been well tested).

	- Andrew

[1]https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/haze/+bug/338891