Being a communication project we can be found all over the place. Below you can

find the specifics.

There are two primary Pidgin-related chat resources:

* `#pidgin` on `irc.freenode.net` **IRC** `devel@conference.pidgin.im` **XMPP

* Multi-User Chat**

Developers, contributors, and users alike are welcome to join us in either of

these fora.

Yes! For general questions about using Pidgin, problems connecting, etc. please

use the [support mailing

list](http://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/support).

If you're a developer and want to ask about the internals of libpurple, Pidgin,

Finch, or GNT, please use the [devel mailing

list](http://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel).

We offer a few other mailing lists, too. See the full list

[here](http://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo).

All mailing lists are run by volunteers. Please be kind.

of bug triaging. There are a slew of a bug reports in Pidgin's ticket system -

you could pick one and try to tackle it and submit a patch. We love patches!

Bug triaging is when you look at a bug report and determine whether it is a

duplicate of an earlier report, or whether it is user error, or maybe you need

to request additional information to be able to reproduce the bug. We don't

allow people to modify ticket attributes, but if you leave a *helpful* comment

on the ticket with your findings, we will take appropriate action. This is a

*significant* help to us, because it allows fewer people to have to focus

primarily on maintenance of the ticket system, while other development resources

are spent as well as they can be.

For more ways to contribute check out the [Contributing Page](contributing.md).

You are more than welcome to ask, but be prepared for the answer to be something

like "ask the authors". We simply don't have the time or energy to keep up with

all of the third-party projects out there, so we probably can't help you.

Common topics that fall into this category are various encryption plugins,

GFire, and various Purple Plugin Pack plugins.

[Here](https://developer.pidgin.im/newticket).

We don't know the answer to this question. Please, stop asking it.

The core Pidgin, Finch, and libpurple developers did not. Here's some related

information:

* XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber), SIMPLE, and IRC are published protocols, so we didn't

* need to reverse-engineer them. (Google Talk is an implementation of XMPP.)

* MSN was at one time a published protocol; over time changes have creeped

* into the protocol and other people have reverse engineered those newer

* revisions. OSCAR and Yahoo! are not published, and were reverse engineered

* by other people. Sametime is maintained by a developer of the meanwhile

* library we make use of. Our SILC plugin was written by one of the protocol's

* developers. Novell kindly provided us with the Novell !GroupWise plugin. QQ

* was reverse-engineered by other people and later absorbed into libpurple.

Yes; use the OTR plugin or the SILC protocol.

These days, almost all chat protocols are encrypted between the client and the

server. We'll assume that you're asking about end-to-end encryption: when only

the two people having the conversation have access to its unencrypted

contents.

The SILC protocol is natively encrypted. For other protocols, which do not

natively support encryption, neither do we. Simply encrypting the data stream

with no verification of the parties involved in the conversation is not secure

in any sense of the word. Some other clients offer options like this, but we

feel that such measures instill a false sense of security that is more harmful

than helpful.

Note that there are a number of third-party plugin developers working on

secure IM frameworks. Take a look at the

[ThirdPartyPlugins](third-party-plugins.md) page for links to those we know

of.

There is currently no support for encrypted file transports.

~~The schedule for releases is every third Thursday~~. However, a new version

will only be released if it meets a certain standard of quality (i.e., it will

not be released if it still has a large number of serious bugs). Therefore,

some releases will take longer than others. Major rewrites means lots of new

bugs to work out. The new version will be released as soon as it is possible to

do so. The [Roadmap](https://developer.pidgin.im/roadmap) gives best-guess

estimates, but take them with a grain of salt--if we aren't ready to release on

a Milestone's due date, we won't release, and that milestone will fall into

"past due."

We follow the [http://semver.org/ Semantic Versioning] scheme.

Starting with version 1.0.0, Pidgin version numbers have 3 parts to them. The

format is major.minor.micro. If we change something internally in Pidgin such

that some plugins won't work with the newer version, we will increment the major

version number. If we don't increment the major version number, and we've added

things to the Pidgin API that won't break any older stuff, we will increment the

minor version number. In any other cases, we will increment the micro version

number. Even and odd numbers have nothing to do with stability, and you should

always be running the latest release of Pidgin to get new features and bug

fixes.

Pidgin, with a capital P, or pidgin, with a little p. In all cases, the

remainder of the letters are lowercase. It's not PIDGIN, nor PidGin, nor

PiDgIn, nor anything similar. Stop doing that.

[Pidgin](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pidgin) is not, in fact, named

[*after* so-called "rats with wings," but rather it refers to a special type of

["broken" language used by speakers of different languages to communicate. We

Of course, Pidgin is a [homonym](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homonym)

for pigeon, so we couldn't resist taking advantage of the pun to create a

cartoon mascot.

Many have subsequently pointed out that the use of carrier pigeons for

transmission of messages fits nicely with Pidgin's functionality as well.

The use of the term purple is another

[homonym](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homonym) of sorts. Long ago,

we started referring to PRotocol PLugins by an abbreviated name "PrPl" which we

would pronounce in the same manner as the color. Since libpurple provides

primarily an interface for using protocol plugins to access a variety of IM

networks, it seemed reasonable that we name the library after the pronunciation.

In keeping with bird theming for IM clients based upon libpurple, including

[Adium](https://adium.im) (the Duck client), and [Pidgin](https://pidgin.im)

(the Pigeon client), Finch was chosen as the name for our text-based client.

Occasionally we, the Pidgin team, receive requests to remove information from

our mailing list archives. We don’t honor those requests. Quite frankly, by

the time we get the request it’s already too late for removal to be useful.

Every post to our mailing lists is archived. Our archives are public. A number

of other mailing list archival services have been subscribed to our lists,

making duplicated archives that we have no control over.

Google and other search engines index our archives, which we also have no

control over. (Yes, robots.txt exists, but search engines are not obligated to

obey it, and we actually want our archives indexed so our users can find

information more easily.)

By the time we receive a request to remove any data from our archives, it

already exists in so many places that one more copy of the data can’t possibly

cause any additional harm. We also do include a disclaimer on the list info

page for each of our mailing lists and in the Help->About box in Pidgin itself

that our mailing lists are publicly archived, thus adequate warning exists to

inform people that their data will be publicly disclosed.

We cannot be held accountable for someone else's failure to read the disclaimer.

So, as a policy, we do not remove anything from our mailing list archives.