Slashdot | Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork

“Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol instant messaging client, has been forked. This is the result of a heated, emotional, and very interesting debate over a controversial new feature: As of version 2.4, the ability to manually resize the text input area has been removed; instead, it automatically resizes depending on how much is typed. It turns out that this feature, along with the uncompromising unwillingness of the developers to provide an option to turn it off, annoys the bejesus of very many users. One comment made by a Professor that teaches “Collaboration in an Open Source World” argued that ‘It’s easy to see why open source developers could develop dogmas. [...] The most dangerous dogma is the one exhibited here: the God feature. “One technological solution can meet every possible user-desired variation of a feature.” [...] You [the developers] are ignoring the fan base with a dedication to your convictions that is alarmingly evident to even the most unobservant of followers, and as such, you are demonstrating that you no longer deserve to be in the position of servicing the needs of your user base.’”

Weird.

I’ve been using Pidgin quite happily for a year or two now.  I noticed this new “feature” after an upgrade and it confused me a bit.  I used to resize the text-entry area to something fairly large, and suddenly I couldn’t.  But it didn’t really matter, because I don’t generally type out pages and pages of text, so I just kind of ignored it.  And these days I don’t even notice how big (or small) the text-entry area is.

But apparently some folks out there desperately want to be able to resize their text-entry area, and the developers of Pidgin absolutely refuse to let it happen.  I guess I’m not surprised that there’s disagreement on this…  Everyone’s got an opinion…  But I am surprised that both sides are so fanatical about it that a fork was the only solution.

Yes, I’ve seen the studies that claim an over-abundance of choices is actually bad.  That people don’t like to have eleventy-billion different ways of doing something unless there’s a damn good reason for it.  And I know that I have personally been swamped with options more than once.  But I don’t really see what harm it would do to put a single checkbox somewhere in the preferences to allow you to resize your text-entry area.  Or, barring an actual checkbox in the preferences, why not a plug-in?

Of course, I find it equally odd that some folks are so desperate to resize it that they’re willing to start a fork.  Myself, I just don’t care that much.  And I have a hard time imagining caring that much about being able to resize a text-entry box.  And why fork the entire project?  Why don’t they just make a plug-in?  Does the Pidgin code somehow prevent a plug-in from altering that behavior?  Or do they just not want to deal with the Pidgin developers anymore?

I assume that this is actually just the tip of the iceberg…  Or maybe it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back…  I’m guessing that there have been other issues, other problems, other disagreements that have led up to this fork.

And that’s the great thing about Open Source Software – you can create a fork.  If you aren’t happy with what the software does you can change it.  You aren’t stuck with what you’re given.

We recently purchased Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem on DVD. The DVD we bought is the two-disc unrated version, that came with all sorts of goodies on the disc… Extra footage that wasn’t in the theatrical version, behind the scenes stuff, making-of stuff, trailers, audio commentary… All the usual stuff. But the second disc had something that surprised me – a digital copy of the movie for use on portable devices.

Now, I haven’t done anything with that second disc yet, so I can’t really say with any certainty whether it works well or not… I would assume that it isn’t just a DivX or MPEG4 stream, it’s probably encrypted and DRMed in some way. But, it is a step in the right direction. It shows that they’re finally starting to realize what it takes to make money these days.

It was also interesting to see what went into the creature effects. So many movies these days are going almost entirely digital, and it often feels like something is missing. The monsters never look quite right. It’s refreshing to see a movie that actually goes to the trouble of building puppets and suits and putting the monsters in-camera with the actors. And it’s great to see the kind of work that goes into making that happen.

I didn’t really notice the new footage… Nothing was dramatically changed. The storyline was still the same, all the key scenes looked the same… I guess it was just some added blood and gore that they couldn’t put into the theatrical version.

I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie the second time around. I was still very impressed with it. They did a great job with this movie.

It is snowing.

I was insulted enough yesterday when I had to put a coat on to come in to work.  And again last night when we had to close windows and turn on the heat again.

That was bad enough…

But now it is snowing again.  Not much, just a few flakes here and there, but snow none the less.

I had really hoped we were done with this crap.  I was thoroughly enjoying the warm weather.  We had the windows open, we had the heaters turned off, I hauled all our patio furniture out of storage, I even put the air conditioner in the window…

And now it is snowing again.

When we were out and about on Sunday we went to see Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

It definitely wasn’t the kind of movie we’d typically watch…  Lots of scatological and drug humor…  Far more sophomoric than our usual tastes.  But it was also hilariously funny.

There was some terrific lampooning of racial stereotypes, bigotry, and racism on all sides.  They poked fun at our government and national paranoia.  There was plenty of gratuitous nudity.  And Neil Patrick Harris made one hell of an appearance.

More cold rain again today.

In fact, it was very cold last night.  I wasn’t paying much attention to the temperature, so I have no idea what the actual numbers were, but it was damn cold.  I wound up sleeping with two blankets over me and I was contemplating turning on the heat again.

At least it isn’t snowing yet…

Last night, as we were getting ready for bed around 11:00, Christopher showed up at our door shaking and barely able to stand.  Something happened with his incision and it was swollen and sore.  He was in incredible pain and the incision really looked pretty scary.  So Terri took him in to the hospital and left me behind to relay messages and whatnot.

She called around 1:00 to let me know that he was going in for a CAT scan, and asked me to call a couple other folks, but that was the last I heard.  And they didn’t get home until about 4:30 or so.

I’m still not sure exactly what happened…  Maybe he overdid it recently, exerted himself a bit too much…  Or maybe he just rolled over funny and strained something…  Or it could have been some random reaction to the healing process…  But the end result is that he had some fluid build-up and bruising.  Nothing horribly wrong with the incision or the operation, the repair was still intact and he was in no danger.  They put him on some more pain medication and sent him home.

But it obviously didn’t make for a terribly restful night.  Terri was there at the hospital with him until 4:30, and I was wandering the house and wondering what was going on until they got home.  So neither one of us actually got to sleep until somewhere around 5:00.

And, of course, all this was after we spent the entire day across the lake having fun.  Terri and I never go out, never do anything.  We generally hang around at the house and play video games.  But yesterday we went across the lake to do some shopping, see a movie, have dinner, and just kind of hang out together.  So we were already tired when we were heading to bed at the end of the day yesterday.  The added ordeal with Christopher was absolutely exhausting.

At some point last night things got very chilly.  The weather channel said it was about 50, but I’m not sure I believe that.  It’s dark, gloomy, overcast, raining, and very chilly.  Normally I like gloomy weather, but right now I just want warmth and sunlight.  I’m absolutely sick of being cold.

So, all of that combined to make a lovely day today.  I’m still feeling a little vague and out-of-sorts…  It feels early, since I got to sleep so late, but in fact it’s going on 3:00.  I called in to work last night to let them know what was going on, so I was able to get some sleep, but they still need me to show up at the shop for a few hours today to take care of some things.

So…  Yeah…  Fun times.

We watched Invasion: Earth this last week…  It’s a mini-series that was jointly produced by the BBC and Sci-Fi Channel a few years back.  I remembered seeing the commercials on TV at the time, but I never got around to watching any of it.

All things considered, it was a pretty good show.  Decent acting, decent effects, good character development.  A much more interesting storyline than what I usually associate with Sci-Fi Channel originals.

Of course it wasn’t without flaws.  The biggest problem was with the pacing – everything happens way too quickly.  The story is absolutely huge.  It’s obvious that they planned for a second season, or more episodes, or whatever…  But they were just trying to cram entirely too much storyline into just six episodes.  So things happened very quickly.

Terri was out of the room for about 10 minutes early in the series and was asking me questions through the rest of it.  Just missing a single line of dialog would leave you scratching your head for an hour.  Made it kind of difficult to just sit back and enjoy the show, it felt almost like I should be taking notes.

And then it all ended very abruptly…

After we watched episode 3 I mentioned to Terri that I really wondered how they were going to wrap everything up in just three more episodes.  The story seemed far too big to be finished that quickly.  There were so many questions, so many possibilities…

Well, they didn’t wrap everything up.  The series ended without answering much.  It really felt like there should be an episode 7, 8, 9…  Certainly didn’t feel like the story was over at all.