Gaim, the ubiquitous open source instant messaging program, in order to settle a lawsuit with America Online, was renamed “Pidgin” last week. The derivative projects, libgaim and gaim-text will be renamed libpurple and Finch respectively. The new website is at pigdin.im, but it’s currently pointing to the Gaim sourceforge site. Pidgin 2.0.0, in development for well over a year, is expected this week.
Gaim Has Been Renamed Pidgin
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
Follow me on Mastodon @[email protected]
sad to see a name i am so familiar with be changed. though given the nature of its name incorporating the proprietary name of aol’s instant messenger, its not surprising
GAIM was called GAIM long before AOL were using ‘AIM’. It’s AOL who should be renamining their product, but looks like the needs of the corporations clearly outweigh the needs of the small guys.
Yeah, that was my impression too. GAIM was used years before AOL got a trademark on AIM, so in my mind AOL’s trademark is invalid. But IANAL so what do I know?
It’s the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
It’s the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
Of course… how could I forget that…
Hey it’s not sad, it’s “sed”.. how on earth are they gonna change all those codes ehh???
now seriously, great move, they did what they gotta do, just a simple move in order to keep the project alive n kicking!!!
goes out to aol of ya!! 😉
I always thought Gaim to be a rather boring and non-intuitive name (As it does a lot more than just AIM, a service which I do not use).
Pidgin is a nice name IMHO, not vulnerable to legal threats (Well, just wait for SCO or someone similar).
Of course, there’s the “Brand” recognition – but hey, if it changes in the menu from “Gaim – Instant Messaging” to “Pidgin – Instant Messaging”, no one should be too confused by that.
How was gaim non-intuitive? the im stands for Instant Messenger. I think pidgin is a step down in that department. “I need to find an instant messenger.. I know, i’ll just search google for pidgin”?
Whats a bit odd, is how long has it been called GAIM? And just suddenly someone at aol out of the blue decides they dont like it anymore? I think stuff like this should have a time limit. If a product exists for more than 5 years or so, and it infringes in its name like this, and the owner of the copyright doesnt say anything. Then that company should loose its right to take and legal action.
Edited 2007-04-08 18:47
If you want to get nit-picky about the im (small letters) doesn’t stand for anything. It’s called Gaim, not GAIM. It used to be call GAIM, and the IM used to stand for Instant Messenger, but the whole thing were short for “GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger”, hence the non-intuitiveness (is that a word?).
I agree, however, that AOL shouldn’t be able to assert their trademark on a product named before the trademark was established. But since GAIM originally referred to AOL in it’s title, I can see why the developers would take the easy way out and just change the name.
How was gaim non-intuitive? the im stands for Instant Messenger. I think pidgin is a step down in that department. “I need to find an instant messenger.. I know, i’ll just search google for pidgin”?
If you search for “instant messenger” on google you will find gaim on the first page. I don’t think it should be expected to have to be able to guess the name of an application to find it with google.
Whats a bit odd, is how long has it been called GAIM? And just suddenly someone at aol out of the blue decides they dont like it anymore?
Did you even bother to read the article???? This has been going on for some years now. It didn’t happen “all of a sudden”. The devs were advised by legal counsel to keep quiet about it.
You are quite correct, and this is with AOL has done what it’s done – using unfair tactics to muscle out competition. This is not unusual for American companies, and the American corporate system (ie. bribe the government) lets them get away with it. Firstly – trademarks weren’t meant to allow common dictionary names – and aim is most certainly that. Just the same as Windows. Both trademarks should have been legally and forceable removed by the powers that be, but since they don’t work for the people, but for the business, that’ll never happen. Corporate America, you gotta love it. NOT.
Dave
I completely agree, “Pidgin” is a great name. As for unintuitive names, what does “Outlook” have to do with mail? Or indeed “Windows” with double-glazing?
Take a hint from IKEA, they never have any trouble with naming, nobody can claim to own the names they use after all.
That being said, now I am awaiting Billy, the OS you assemble yourself and is very modular
The already have a Billy, but it’s a bookcase that can be extended for CD’s as well. If they made it into an operating system too, it would become very confusing (and modular).
So they changed the name and AOL agreed to let them use the “i” from AIM in the new name.
I love trademark law
Do you remember a popular browser called Phoenix that was renamed Firebird later? Many users don’t even remeber those earlier names anymore, yet the name change to Firefox caused a great deal of noise among its users during the time of change. It is Firefox now, and popular and well-known because of its quality, not because of its name (whether Phoenix, Firebird, Mozilla or Firefox).
Why should anyone care too much if only a program name changes to something else? Especially as a brand new version of GAIM/Pidgin, 2.0.0, should be out very soon.
Just get used to it. Pidgin is an ok name.
The difference here though is that ‘Firebird’ was a poor name choice due to the already /present/ Firebird database project.
No, this story is more akin to Microsoft deciding to name IE8 ‘Firefox’ and then suing Mozilla for infringement, forcing them to change their product name.
Yeah, ok, I agree that the cases (Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix & GAIM/Pidgin) are not compareble. And I sure think that trademark decisions should not be made only according to the amount of money someone has. If GAIM had their name before AOL, they should be able to keep it.
However, my point was just to say that although it may be sad to see a familar name to go, the name change itself may not be worth tearing your pants for… The new name is as good as the old one, and may soon be more familar to everyone than the old name. There are just more important things to worry about – like the general principles behind trademark and legal decisions in IT business nowadays.
Edited 2007-04-08 19:55
“No, this story is more akin to Microsoft deciding to name IE8 ‘Firefox’ and then suing Mozilla for infringement, forcing them to change their product name.”
Technically, it should be “this story is more akin to Microsoft deciding to name IE8 ‘Irefox’ … ”
On that same subject, isn’t “Bon Echo” (the name Gentoo and Arch use for Firefox, and a name which, iirc, I remember seeing a message about Mozilla suggesting for non-canonical versions of FF) crappy? IMO “IceWeasel” (the name of the app in Debian) is much, much better.
IceWeasel is a fork of Firefox. Bon Echo is just the codename for Firefox’s 2.0 release. The reason that Gentoo used ‘Bon Echo’ instead of the official Firefox branding was that if you compile your own version of Firefox with the Firefox branding, you are not allowed to distribute the binary. If you don’t use the Firefox branding, you are allowed to distribute the binary. Without the official branding, Firefox defaulted to its 2.0 codename, ‘Bon Echo’.
Of note, Gentoo used to default to compiling without the official branding, with a use flag to turn it on, but now defaults to using the official branding unless you use the ‘bindist’ use flag to turn the official branding off.
Bon Echo was the internal name for the unrealeased alphas, betas and maybe RCs of Firefox, adopted because the developers felt that using a different name for the unstable versions could prevent uninformed users from installing it as if it was a stable release and then associate it to the usual temporary problems affecting a software during its development. So every Firefox release has a configure options enabling the standard name and icon, which are on by default only in the stable releases.
Gentoo and Arch can’t distribute Firefox with its trade-marked name because they apply some patches to the original source, so they don’t enable that option by default, but they don’t distribute a fork, like Debian.
you wrote:
Do you remember a popular browser called Phoenix that was renamed Firebird later? Many users don’t even remeber those earlier names anymore, yet the name change to Firefox caused a great deal of noise among its users during the time of change.
Not sure this example is exactly analogous — the user base grew most significantly _after_ the name was changed to firefox. Imagine if the name were to change today from firefox to blackbird. A lot of users would be confused and it would take longer than you might think to get the word out.
Case in point: Wireshark is the new, maintained ethereal. I bump into a lot of folks who didn’t know that, even though it was announced almost a year ago.
To see the name Gaim go, I guess AOL really does stand for ‘Arseholes on line’.
Edited 2007-04-08 20:40
What is the air speed velocity of an unladen pidgin?
American, or European? It makes a difference you see, one has software patents, the other doesn’t.
++ to both of you.
Why didn’t they just rename libgaim to libpidgin?
It’s stems from protocol plugins… prpl… purple, see, completely logical, atleast that’s their reasoning behind the name.
Okay this is a little off-topic but it is humorous so I might be forgiven. I kid you not this is true. So I work for this health company in Boston and we often times get takeout from the deli down the street or from this Chinese restaurant the next town over. One of my friends turned me on to the crispy chicken wings they made – very delicious with a nice seasoning. I was munching away on my lunch and a friend at work ran over completely white faced like a ghost. She showed me this article in the Boston globe and it was about our favorite Chinese restaurant being closed down by the board of health. Apparently all those delicious chicken wings were pigeons. I can’t believe we were eating street pigeons for months. I am not in favor of this name change since it brings back difficult memories.
Just claim that it caused you to lose weight and you could make millions pushing the “Pigeon Diet”
Not much has changed since gaim2 beta 6 but they are going with the Tango icon set and its looking great.
http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/7525/pidginscreenshotga9.png
is this screnshot just related to Suse Modifying it or is it the actual ” new stuff “
How about:
Gim
GMess
Gnim
It’s too late to discuss prospective names.
…want from “the little people” p*ss me off. Was that REALLY necessary? Were AOL users getting confused and using GAIM instead of AIM? Oh well. I guess I particularly dislike AIM because my wife used to use it and it took me months to get rid of it — until I had to actually scream and physically threaten one of the assistants from India “That’s IT! I’m getting on a bleep bleep plane and flying to bleeping India RIGHT NOW, Joe!”**
**they always have names like joe, or david or something like that.
`pigdin.im` on line 3
note: candidates are: pidgin.im
warning: is common for people to mistype, the difference between pidgin and pigdin is minor, but difference between “I’m a pidgin user” and “I’m a PIGdin user” should have been taken into consideration.
warning: The pronunciation of the word pidgin (if we remove the ‘d’) is very similar to Spanish word ‘pillín’, could be use as joke between Spanish speaking people (don’t know about other languages).
=== build finished: 1 error, 2 warnings ===
even imessengr spelled it wrong in their article title…
http://blog.imessengr.com/2007/04/pigdin-gaim-has-new-name.html
Edited 2007-04-09 14:06
From Wikipedia:
“A pidgin is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues…”
A GREAT name for a multi-protocol instant messaging client.
A GREAT name for a multi-protocol instant messaging client.
“Babel Fish” would be an even better name, then, but that one is certainly claimed by more than a few.
“Pidgin” is just a hard name to like.
“””
“Pidgin” is just a hard name to like.
“””
I agree. Gaim was a good name. But Pidgin? Pidgin reminds me of all the horrible documentation that I’ve gotten with various motherboards I’ve bought over the years.
You know the ones I mean. The ones where the explanations of the BIOS settings goes something like this:
Setting “on” to CAS 1 but may instable.
Setting “off” to CAS 2 ass possible unperformant.
Note to self:
Keep CAS 2 “on”.
Why call the libraries something that bears no resemblence to the application?…….very confusing!
Found online: Libpurple comes from the abbreviation long used for protocol plugins in the client, “prpl”
They should’ve done this on April 1st…
As a user of Adium which in my opinion is the best messenger app on any platform. Would be nice if they used the name change to change than just the name.
They need to streamline the user interface, it plainly sucks. I know there are fans, but it’s way way too clunky. Pidgin represent a UI of a five or six year old messenger. Sorry, i’m sticking the boot in, but I really think it should change.
Check out these pics, of Adium. If you’ve used it, you’ll know what I mean
http://www.adiumx.com/screenshots/
Sure, Adium is pretty, but IMHO Pidgin’s interface is easier to look at. All that eye-candy makes it harder to have a quick look and grasp quickly what’s happening, you know? But it’s all just a matter of personal tastes really. Besides, I don’t use Pidgin anyway cos it lacks support for webcam..aMSN looks just plain hideous, but atleast it does what I want
I have to agree, Adium is one of my favorite IM clients. Nothing really comes close to it’s simplicity of interface.
Too bad others don’t take it’s lead. Most IM clients just have horrible interfaces, and it’s a cross platform problem.
Sim-im is another good looking client.
http://sim-im.org/
http://gentoo-portage.com/up_img/img_800px/632.png
Edited 2007-04-09 13:24
Some of us just want to see a plain text window. In fact, even with most of the “features” of Gaim disabled, I still find it a bit bloated.
Right now, my Gaim client is using 10MB+ of RAM, which still seems like a lot for sending text and the occasional file.
*sigh* If only someone would make a client without smilies and themes.
I use adiumx on my mac and gaim^H^H^H^H pidgin on my linux box. If adiumx ran on linux……. hmmm
Considering your Adium is for OS X only, and GAIM runs on everything, I think utility trumps beauty in this case. I use Gaim on every OS I use; FreeBSD, Windows and Ubuntu.
Comparing Adium to Gaim is useless, as Adium is written for OS X using the native OS X GUI toolkit. Gaim is written using GTK and thus looks like an app written using GTK. Gaim is also skinnable, so it can look different than it’s default.
As a Google employee at least he doesn’t have to worry about Google making him change the name for Pidgin being to close to their own PigeonRank technology.
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
There will intially be many pidgin holes, involving many branches.
I imagine eventually they will incorporate voice calls, and then we will have Carrier Pidgin.
It’s unfortunate that voice chat support got dropped from version 2.0, with no timetable in sight.
BS reasons they ‘had’ to change the name aside, I like the name change since I often find it easier to explain to nubes that Trillian ‘works with four protocols’ than doing so with GAIM, as I keep encountering dumbasses who think that because it’s called GAIM it only does AIM, no matter how many times you explain it to them
Pidgin is a truly appropriate name for the program, as the only more appropriate name I can think of for a messenger program would be L33T.
Certainly more accurate than say… Trillian, Fire or Adium.
Edited 2007-04-09 17:49
To all of you who are “upset” about GAIM being forced to rename itself to Pidgin, here’s a simple recourse: Rename the link in your graphical shell from “Pidgin” to “GAIM”. Problem solved. Everybody’s happy. 😉
Would this problem have been salved a year ago if they had just changed the name then? What was the long legal process about. They could have saved lots of time and money, if they had just changed the name the frist time AOL complained. But i guess you cant just give in to the man, or he will keep coming back and asking for more.
All i know, is good to see the project back on track, and i cant wait for the 2.0.0_final release
Thanks again for a great product guys, keep up the good work
It’s probably good if we can all make sure everyone knows that “Pidgin” is the *new* version of what used to be Gaim. That way, all the complaints from AOL will be for naught because Pidgin is a very powerful, multi-protocol instant message application.
What I really want, though, is audio and video.