File Transfers Not Starting

[batkinz]

If you would like me to show you several links to posts where developers have told me "the change is permanent, sorry"... i can do it... I will post it later.. i need to run to class now...

As for it being open source and being able to put features back in... I may be a computer science major but i only know some java and c++ and really am not that great in either. Do you still think I would be able to do it... I don't want to try to change my adium only to see it not working... especially after all the hard work it took me to re-customize v.80 to my likings...

I think you underestimate how many people disagree with some of the new features... saying that only 15 users disagree is just a mere guess on your part and i'm almost certain you're wrong. please don't call us selfish because we are displeased with changes... That just seems like you are getting mad at us because we don't like some of the changes you made. don't get me wrong a lot of the changes are great, but some are less desirable.

[haruki]

Well, I suppose that's that. I appreciate the dialog, Adam, even if it did get a little heated. I'm a little dismayed that you've chosen to represent me as some kind of recurring troublemaker—I posted one inflammatory post in another thread, and after I cooled down a bit, posted my first contribution to THIS thread, worded exactly as it has now been preserved, which I believe is much calmer. I'll admit that my first (and now deleted) post was inflammatory, and I apologize for that. However, to imply that I'm some sort of repeat troll who hates the Adium development team is a little disingenuous.

However, what's done is done—clearly you believe that file transfer is not a high priority amongst the bulk of your users, and although my personal experience suggests otherwise, they say the plural of anecdote is not data (until n > 50 or so, randomly sampled ). I'll accept on faith the assertion that you've done the appropriate research. Again, I apologize for any disturbance I've caused. I hope my posts haven't been completely unhelpful to anyone, but feel free to disregard them. That's life.

Keep up the good work on Adium.




...Now time to go bug the libgaim coders about NAT traversal with regards to AIM file transfers. 8)

[Adam Iser]

If you would like me to show you several links to posts where developers have told me "the change is permanent, sorry"... i can do it... I will post it later.. i need to run to class now...

Why? What would this accomplish?

I think you underestimate how many people disagree with some of the new features... saying that only 15 users disagree is just a mere guess on your part and i'm almost certain you're wrong.

We are both guessing, of course. But my guesses, being based upon the wealth of user feedback at my disposal, are much more informed than yours.

please don't call us selfish because we are displeased with changes...

I am not. I am calling people selfish for expecting us to spend development time on their specific requests, which influence a small number of users in a minor way, over other requests which influence a large number of users in a major way. Requests of this nature are selfish by definition.

That just seems like you are getting mad at us because we don't like some of the changes you made. don't get me wrong a lot of the changes are great, but some are less desirable.

I am not. I get mad when users come to these forums and tell us we're not doing our job because their requests aren't being fulfilled, or that we have made a mistake by not tailoring Adium to their specific needs.

Criticizing the developers for failing to please everyone with every change we make is ridiculous and I am extremely tired of it. Just stop.

[Adam Iser]

Just to clarify, I never stated that file transfer was a low priority.

[cbarrett]

Haruki: I'm glad to see you managed to come to terms with the reality of the situation. Hopefully you can continue to contribute to the Adium community in positive ways

EDIT: Just to follow up on Adam's clarification, consider this: If file transfer was a low priority, would we have spent so much time working on our beautiful new file transfer UI?

[evands]

There's a third factor not mentioned in the discussion above. AIM runs a proxy server which serves as a middle man for file transfers. The official clients fall back on this proxy server when necessary to navigate firewalls and routers. We don't currently have that option.

So... even with iChat and the official AIM client, file transfers are faster (because of the lack of a proxy) if neither party is behind a router without NAT or port forwarding enabled?

Got it in one, absolutely.

And, this proxy server is closed to other clients besides the official one and iChat? Or is it just not yet implemented in the GAIM code?

- Oliver

It's no more or less closed to other clients than the rest of the AIM OSCAR protocol... which is to say that it's closed But to answer the real question: It's just not implemented in Gaim yet. And I have work in progress locally which is beginning to implement it. And I've spent HOURS and HOURS on it in the past already and it isn't finished.

[DavidTO]

The one thing that your feedback doesn't tell you, that anecdotal tells me is that there are people who try adium, see that it doesn't do FT, and then leave. They don't stick with the app long enough to send feedback.

I have two friends that won't do adium for this reason alone. That's 2/3 of your user base in my neck of the woods.

[Kazrog]

This is my first post to these forums, but I've been an Adium user for a long time and I love the program, great work you guys! The AIM file transfer issue is an annoyance but I understand that this is Libgaim's problem and not Adium's.

Here's the most interesting part of this thread, and nobody's talking about it...

e) These changes would help support and generate revenue for a company which is currently using Adium and Libgaim code in a commercial product.

What commercial product is this? Isn't that a violation of the GPL terms, to sell open source code commercially?? Whoever this company is needs to be busted!

[haruki]

This is my first post to these forums, but I've been an Adium user for a long time and I love the program, great work you guys! The AIM file transfer issue is an annoyance but I understand that this is Libgaim's problem and not Adium's.

Here's the most interesting part of this thread, and nobody's talking about it...

e) These changes would help support and generate revenue for a company which is currently using Adium and Libgaim code in a commercial product.

What commercial product is this? Isn't that a violation of the GPL terms, to sell open source code commercially?? Whoever this company is needs to be busted!

I don't believe so. My understanding is that open source code can be sold for commercial profit as long as the source code is made available and due credit is given to the original authors of code that doesn't belong to the new team. How do you think Apple adopts open source code, folds it into OS X and related applications, and sells it? (I know, most of these are probably not under GPL specifically, but I believe the principles are similar in most open source licenses.)

[Kazrog]

This is my first post to these forums, but I've been an Adium user for a long time and I love the program, great work you guys! The AIM file transfer issue is an annoyance but I understand that this is Libgaim's problem and not Adium's.

Here's the most interesting part of this thread, and nobody's talking about it...

e) These changes would help support and generate revenue for a company which is currently using Adium and Libgaim code in a commercial product.

What commercial product is this? Isn't that a violation of the GPL terms, to sell open source code commercially?? Whoever this company is needs to be busted!

I don't believe so. My understanding is that open source code can be sold for commercial profit as long as the source code is made available and due credit is given to the original authors of code that doesn't belong to the new team. How do you think Apple adopts open source code, folds it into OS X and related applications, and sells it? (I know, most of these are probably not under GPL specifically, but I believe the principles are similar in most open source licenses.)

I figure this is different because Apple in a sense "bundles" the open source based applications alongside original applications, so they could argue that the users are paying for the OS itself, and the programs that are NOT based on open source code, and that they are simply "including" the open source based applications as a convenience, so that Safari, etc. is essentially a "free" program still.

Plus, Apple has made significant contributions to open source projects. I don't claim to be an expert on the legalities of open source though, so everything I'm saying could be wrong.

[nanovivid]

What commercial product is this?

I'm guessing it's probably Proteus. IIRC, they wrote the IMservices daemon (which talks to libgaim via distributed events or something like that) so they could use libgaim and not release their source code. But I could be wrong about that.

[Edit: LOL, I didn't realise there was a word filter on P r o t e u s here. ]

[evands]

What commercial product is this?

I'm guessing it's probably Pr*teus. IIRC, they wrote the IMservices daemon (which talks to libgaim via distributed events or something like that) so they could use libgaim and not release their source code. But I could be wrong about that.

[Edit: LOL, I didn't realise there was a word filter on P r o t e u s here. ]

Not just use libgaim, but use the code we wrote for talking to libgaim. Heh.

[nanovivid]

Not just use libgaim, but use the code we wrote for talking to libgaim. Heh.

Oh. I hadn't heard about that. Sneaky!

[The_Tick]

This is my first post to these forums, but I've been an Adium user for a long time and I love the program, great work you guys! The AIM file transfer issue is an annoyance but I understand that this is Libgaim's problem and not Adium's.

Here's the most interesting part of this thread, and nobody's talking about it...

e) These changes would help support and generate revenue for a company which is currently using Adium and Libgaim code in a commercial product.

What commercial product is this? Isn't that a violation of the GPL terms, to sell open source code commercially?? Whoever this company is needs to be busted!

I don't believe so. My understanding is that open source code can be sold for commercial profit as long as the source code is made available and due credit is given to the original authors of code that doesn't belong to the new team. How do you think Apple adopts open source code, folds it into OS X and related applications, and sells it? (I know, most of these are probably not under GPL specifically, but I believe the principles are similar in most open source licenses.)

The differences in the licenses are why apple can bundle things, and depending on the license, has to give back.

GPL software can be sold for the cost of delivery/shipping, but if you distribute a binary you must have the source available somehow. Go read the gpl for 8 hours and then come back.

PS: Please don't twist my words around in a response and then make me look evil, kplsthnx!

[dra]

a good way to avoid problems like this might be to publish some kind of roadmap in an easily accessible place...if people see that you are indeed working on "xxx" feature that they want so badly, they will just shut up. even if it doesnt make it into the next release, or next next release, they can at least see you working on it. i think the growl dev team does this. actually i know they are, because i was just asking about a feature a few days ago, and they were able to point me to a web page that said "working towards including it in "xxx" release". kinda cool.

not to jump in on either side of the issue...i always thought file transfer was pretty widely used. then again, im a college student, so i guess that has something to do with it. constantly sending projects, mp3s, what have you.

[Adam Iser]

a good way to avoid problems like this might be to publish some kind of roadmap in an easily accessible place...if people see that you are indeed working on "xxx" feature that they want so badly, they will just shut up. even if it doesnt make it into the next release, or next next release, they can at least see you working on it. i think the growl dev team does this. actually i know they are, because i was just asking about a feature a few days ago, and they were able to point me to a web page that said "working towards including it in "xxx" release". kinda cool.

Agreed. A better method of organizing all this mess is long overdue

[The_Tick]

a good way to avoid problems like this might be to publish some kind of roadmap in an easily accessible place...if people see that you are indeed working on "xxx" feature that they want so badly, they will just shut up. even if it doesnt make it into the next release, or next next release, they can at least see you working on it. i think the growl dev team does this. actually i know they are, because i was just asking about a feature a few days ago, and they were able to point me to a web page that said "working towards including it in "xxx" release". kinda cool.

Agreed. A better method of organizing all this mess is long overdue

I have a stone and this stick. We could use that.

[swiney]

So.... here's a bit more history for folks.

I have problems with AIM ft through Adium, even when NATs and routers are not involved. I looked at the source a few months ago, saw it was gaimlib related. FYI to folks... this means that many projects more than just Adium are affected... it also affects Fire and Gaim, just to name a couple. With either of those clients, the symptoms are the same.

The bug report is here:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... id=100235

I think I know where the Adium folks are coming from. I also sometimes develop in spare time, so I looked at the code. It's huge, complicated, and uncommented. I believe it would be _very_ difficult to debug this code, if you weren't the original author, or someone who has authored their own Oscar protocol implementation.

There are docs out there on how the Oscar protocol works, and there are other implementations to look at. Both Miranda and Kopete developed their own code, not to mention some implementations in other programming languages (I know of one in Java, there are probably others.) I think these would all be good sources for anyone who wants to help the gaim developers hack at debugging the problems.

Jason

[evands]

trac.adiumx.com anyone? Yaaay!

[jrenney]

Hey, say if I give you guys a million dollars, think you could successfully implement FT?

hmmm... where's that paypal button again?