Pidgin (software)

Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a free and open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple that has support for many instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to simultaneously log into various services from a single application, with a single interface for both popular and obsolete protocols (from AOL to Discord), thus avoiding the hassle of having to deal with a new bloated, unaudited, closed-source, and different piece of software for each device and protocol.

"Gaim" redirects here. For other uses, see Gaim (disambiguation).
This article is about the instant messenger. For coding, see pidgin code.
Pidgin
Screenshot
Pidgin's buddy list window in Trisquel
Initial releaseDecember 31, 1998 (1998-12-31) (as Gaim)
Stable release2.14.1 (June 11, 2020 (2020-06-11)[1]) [±]
Preview releaseNone [±]
Repository
Written inC (C#, Perl, Python, Tcl are used for plugins)
PlatformLinux
macOS
Microsoft Windows
Solaris
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
Illumos
Available inMultiple languages[2]
TypeInstant messaging client
LicenseGPLv2+
Websitepidgin.im 

The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over three million in 2007.[3]

Pidgin is widely used for its Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) plugin, which offers end-to-end encryption. For this reason it is included in the privacy- and anonymity-focused operating system Tails.[4]

History
Gaim 2.0.0 beta 6 running under GNOME 2.16.0

The program was originally written by Mark Spencer, an Auburn University sophomore, as an emulation of AOL's IM program AOL Instant Messenger on Linux using the GTK+ toolkit.[5] The earliest archived release was on December 31, 1998.[6] It was named GAIM (GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger) accordingly. The emulation was not based on reverse engineering, but instead relied on information about the protocol that AOL had published on the web. Development was assisted by some of AOL's technical staff.[5][7] Support for other IM protocols was added soon thereafter.[5]

On 6 July 2015, Pidgin scored seven out of seven points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard.[8] They have received points for having communications encrypted in transit, having communications encrypted with keys the providers don't have access to (end-to-end encryption), making it possible for users to independently verify their correspondent's identities, having past communications secure if the keys are stolen (forward secrecy), having their code open to independent review (open source), having their security designs well-documented, and having recent independent security audits.[8]

Naming dispute

In response to pressure from AOL, the program was renamed to the acronymous-but-lowercase gaim. As AOL Instant Messenger gained popularity, AOL trademarked its acronym, "AIM", leading to a lengthy legal struggle with the creators of GAIM, who kept the matter largely secret.[9]

On April 6, 2007, the project development team announced the results of their settlement with AOL, which included a series of name changes: Gaim became Pidgin, libgaim became libpurple, and gaim-text (the command-line interface version) became finch. The name Pidgin was chosen in reference to the term "pidgin", which describes communication between people who do not share a common language.[10] The name "purple" refers to "prpl", the internal libgaim name for an IM protocol plugin.[11]

Due to the legal issues, version 2.0 of the software was frozen in beta stages. Following the settlement, it was announced that the first official release of Pidgin 2.0.0 was hoped to occur during the two weeks from April 8, 2007.[12] However, Pidgin 2.0 was not released as scheduled; Pidgin developers announced on April 22, 2007 that the delay was due to the preferences directory ".gaim".[13]

Pidgin 2.0.0 was released on May 3, 2007. Other visual changes were made to the interface in this version, including updated icons.[14]

Features
Pidgin running on Ubuntu

Pidgin provides a graphical front-end for libpurple using GTK+.[15] Libpurple supports many instant-messaging protocols.

Pidgin supports multiple operating systems, including Windows and many Unix-like systems such as Linux, the BSDs, and AmigaOS. It is included by default in the operating systems Tails and Xubuntu.

Pluggability

The program is designed to be extended with plugins. Plugins are often written by third-party developers. They can be used to add support for protocols, which is useful for those such as Skype or Discord which have licensing issues (however, the users' data and interactions are still subject to their policies and eavesdropping). They can also add other significant features. For example, the "Off-the-Record Messaging" (OTR) plugin provides end-to-end encryption.

The TLS encryption system is pluggable, allowing different TLS libraries to be easily substituted. GnuTLS is the default, and NSS is also supported. Some operating systems' ports, such as OpenBSD's, choose to use OpenSSL or LibreSSL by default instead.

Contacts

Contacts with multiple protocols can be grouped into one single contact instead of managing multiple protocols, and contacts can be given aliases or placed into groups.

To reach users as they log on or a status change occurs (such as moving from "Away" to "Available"), Pidgin supports on-action automated scripts called Buddy Pounces to automatically reach the user in customizable ways.

File transfer

Pidgin supports file transfers for many protocols. It lacks some protocol-specific features like the folder sharing available from Yahoo. Direct, peer-to-peer file transfers are supported over protocols such as XMPP and MSN.

Voice and video chat

As of version 2.6 (released on August 18, 2009), Pidgin supports voice/video calls using Farstream.[16] As of July 2015, calls can only be initiated through the XMPP protocol.[17]

Miscellaneous

Further features include support for themes, emoticons, spell checking, and notification area integration.[18]

Supported protocols

The following protocols are officially supported by libpurple 2.12.0, without any extensions or plugins:[19]

Some XMPP servers provide transports, which allow users to access networks using non-XMPP protocols without having to install plugins or additional software. Pidgin's support for XMPP means that these transports can be used to communicate via otherwise unsupported protocols, including not only instant messaging protocols, but also protocols such as SMS or E-mail.

Additional protocols, supported by third-party plugins, include Discord,[20] Telegram,[21] Microsoft OCS/LCS (extended SIP/SIMPLE),[22] Facebook Messenger,[23] QQ,[24] Skype via skype4pidgin plugin,[25] WhatsApp[26] and the Xfire gaming network (requires the Gfire plugin).[27]

Plugins

Various other features are supported using third-party plugins.[28] Such features include:

  • End-to-end encryption, through Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR)
  • Notifications (such as showing "toaster" popups or Snarl notifications, or lighting LEDs on laptops)
  • Showing contacts what the user is listening to in various media players
  • Adding mathematical formulas written in LaTeX to conversations
  • Skype text chat via skype4pidgin and newer SkypeWeb[29] plugin
  • Discord text chat via the purple-discord[20] plugin
  • Watching videos directly into a conversation when receiving a video sharing website link (YouTube, Vimeo)

Mascot

The mascot of Pidgin is a purple pigeon with the name of The Purple Pidgin.[30]

Criticisms
  • Passwords are stored in a plaintext file, readable by any person or program that can access the user's files. Version 3.0 of Pidgin (no announced release date)[31] will support password storage in system keyrings such as KWallet and the GNOME Keyring.[32]
  • Pidgin does not currently support pausing or reattempting file transfers.[33][34][35]
  • As of version 2.4 and later, the ability to manually resize the text input box of conversations was removed. This led to a fork, Carrier (originally named Funpidgin).[36][37][38]
  • Pidgin does not allow disabling the group sorting on the contact list.[39]
  • As observed by Wired in 2015, the libpurple codebase is "known for its bountiful security bugs".[40]

Other notable software based on libpurple

BitlBee and Minbif are IRCd-like gateways to multiple IM networks, and can be compiled with libpurple to increase functionality.

gollark: Yep!
gollark: In a sensible language.
gollark: Fixed types, fixed length.
gollark: No, they would be `(a, b)`.
gollark: What? No. This is another weird-special-casing thing.

See also

References
  1. Kramlich, Gary (June 11, 2020). "Pidgin 2.14.1 Has been released!". lists.pidgin.im. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  2. About Pidgin: Supported languages
  3. "Luke Schierer discusses Pidgin, Open source and life" Archived February 8, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. PC World Australia, October 10, 2007.
  4. "Chatting with Pidgin and OTR". Tails. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  5. Herper, Matthew (July 16, 2002). "Better Instant Messaging Through Linux" Forbes.com.
  6. Crawford, J. (1999). "User Guide". marko.net. Archived from the original on May 8, 1999. Retrieved October 15, 2011. As of now, the most recent sources are here (the file date is December 31, 1998)
  7. Spencer, Mark (1998). "GAIM: GTK+ America OnLine Instant Messenger". Original project home page. marko.net. Archived from the original on February 10, 1999.
  8. "Secure Messaging Scorecard. Which apps and tools actually keep your messages safe?". Electronic Frontier Foundation. November 4, 2014. Archived from the original on May 28, 2015. Retrieved July 6, 2015.
  9. "Sean Egan's Blog - The Power of Momentum (continued)" Archived June 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. pidgin.im. May 23, 2007.
  10. "Important and Long Delayed News". pidgin.im. April 6, 2007. Archived from the original on April 8, 2007. Retrieved October 15, 2011.
  11. "What's with the name libpurple, anyway?". pidgin.im. Retrieved April 22, 2014.
  12. "Important and Long Delayed News". pidgin.im. April 6, 2007. Archived from the original on April 8, 2007. Retrieved October 15, 2011. Now that the settlement is signed, we hope to have the final Pidgin 2.0.0 release late this week or early next.
  13. "Working towards 2.0.0". pidgin.im. April 22, 2007. Archived from the original on April 25, 2007. Retrieved April 22, 2007.
  14. Egan, Sean (April 30, 2007). "Identity vs. Account Orientation". pidgin.im. Archived from the original on May 4, 2007. Retrieved May 1, 2007.
  15. "What Is Libpurple - Pidgin - Trac". Pidgin.im. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
  16. "Changelog". pidgin.im. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
  17. "Voice and Video". pidgin.im. Retrieved August 22, 2009.
  18. "About Pidgin". pidgin.im. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
  19. Pidgin developers. "Pidgin". pidgin.im. Retrieved December 15, 2017.
  20. "purple-discord github repository". Retrieved December 2, 2019.
  21. GitHub - majn/telegram-purple: Adds support for Telegram to Pidgin, Adium, Finch and other Libpurple based messengers
  22. "SIPE Project". Retrieved February 29, 2012.
  23. GitHub - Purple Facebook implements the Facebook Messenger protocol into pidgin, finch, and libpurple.
  24. "libqq". code.google.com. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
  25. "Skype "API Plugin for Pidgin/libpurple/Adium"". RobbMob.com. Retrieved July 6, 2009.
  26. "WhatsApp on your computer: Pidgin plugin". davidgf.net. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
  27. "Third Party Plugins". pidgin.im. Retrieved March 2, 2009.
  28. "Pidgin Third-Party Plugins". pidgin.im. Retrieved September 22, 2009.
  29. "SkypeWeb plugin github repository". Retrieved December 2, 2019.
  30. bleeter. "#14764 (Name the Mascot Pidginski!) -- set to wontfix". developer.pidgin.im. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  31. "Milestone 3.0.0--Pidgin". July 3, 2014.
  32. "KeyringSupport--Pidgin". pidgin.im. July 3, 2014.
  33. "Ticket #5769 (new enhancement) - Resume broken file transfers". pidgin.im. May 11, 2008. Retrieved October 15, 2011.
  34. "Ticket #7486 (closed enhancement: duplicate) - xdcc download-resuming-support". November 7, 2008. Retrieved December 30, 2008.
  35. "Ticket #1425 (new enhancement)- No ability to resume in IRC file transfers". pidgin.im. May 30, 2007. Retrieved December 30, 2008.
  36. "Ticket #4986 (closed enhancement: wontfix) - automatic chat input field resizing should be optional, regression from 2.3". pidgin.im. March 1, 2008. Retrieved March 8, 2008.
  37. Adams, Paul (April 22, 2008). "In Response to User Demand, Pidgin Forks". Wired.com. Archived from the original on May 19, 2008.
  38. Malda, Rob (April 30, 2008). "Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork". Slashdot.
  39. "#1325: add option to hide groups". pidgin.im. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
  40. Greenberg, Andy (October 31, 2015). "Tor Just Launched the Easiest App Yet for Anonymous, Encrypted IM". WIRED. Retrieved October 31, 2015.
  41. "meebo from the backside". meebo.com. July 15, 2008. Archived from the original on August 19, 2008. Retrieved October 3, 2008.
  42. "Tubes". Telepathy.freedesktop.org. Archived from the original on August 24, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
  43. "Telepathy Wiki - Components". Telepathy.freedesktop.org. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
  44. "Instantbird:FAQ - Instantbird Wiki". Wiki.instantbird.org. February 10, 2011. Archived from the original on May 28, 2013. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
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