GNOME 2.22 planning: Empathy messaging client and toolkit proposed for inclusion (original) (raw)

We have previously discussed Empathy, an open source instant messaging client and toolkit that is part of the Telepathy project. Empathy has officially been proposed for inclusion in GNOME 2.22, making Telepathy and the Mission Control connection management framework potential external dependencies.

Empathy is rapidly becoming an important part of the GNOME software ecosystem and is already packaged in several mainstream distributions, including the upcoming Ubuntu 7.10 release. Empathy integration features for Nautilus, Totem, Epiphany, and Jokosher and others are currently being developed. The Empathy toolkit is also being used by Intel as part of its new Linux-based mobile platform. Telepathy could eventually provide pervasive messaging and presence functionality throughout the entire desktop environment.

Although there is much support for Empathy in the GNOME developer community, there are some who are reluctant to support inclusion in GNOME 2.22 because of limited documentation, the need to relicense GPL components adapted from the Gossip client under the LGPL, and general concerns about completeness. It is not yet certain whether or not these issues will be resolved in time for Empathy to be included in GNOME 2.22, but the project has significant momentum and provides considerable value, making it likely candidate for inclusion at some point in the future if not in GNOME 2.22.

In related news, Empathy 0.13 was officially released today, with a completely reworked contact list API, an improved smiley management algorithm, avatar caching, and many bug fixes and minor improvements. Empathy developer Xavier Claessens has also announced a new experimental Empathy branch with preliminary support for VoIP.

Other features being considered for GNOME 2.22 include Novell's improvements to the clock applet, Alex Gravely's innovative Gimmie project, the Anjuta software development environment, and the Cheese photo application. Stay tuned for in-depth coverage of some of these features in upcoming journal posts.

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