This isn’t exactly breaking news as it happened about 2 weeks ago — and I’m surprised I never saw this anywhere — but Gaim, the open-source instant-messaging client, has not only released a new version but has re-branded itself as Pidgin. For those unfamiliar with Gaim Pidgin, it is an IM client for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes that allows you to talk to friends on AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr all at the same time.
I don’t have all of the details, but from what I gather on their Web site they were having legal issues with AOL over trademark naming issues.
This release owes a special thanks to a bunch of people, but I especially want to acknowledge The Software Freedom Law Center, which has represented Pidgin in its negotiations with AOL and helped us form Instant Messaging Freedom Inc. … Now that our legal worries are behind us and the huge undertaking of 2.0.0 is complete, we’re all looking forward to continuing to actively develop Pidgin, Finch, and libpurple, and returning to our regular release cycle.
I’ve been a big fan of Gaim for many years since I started using Linux, as it was and probably continues to be the best Linux IM client in my opinion. As I just re-formatted the Windows PC I’m on right now, I needed to install an IM client. I figured hey let me throw Gaim on here seeing as AIM is slow as a dog nowadays, and to my surprise Gaim is now Pidgin. So the end result was installing Pidgin which so far is operating very nicely.
Let’s close this one out with some screen shots of Pidgin I captured during installation and first operation:
