[Adium-devl] [Adium-feedback] I would like to port Adium to Windows XP

[Geoffrey Elliott]

Christopher,

Thank you for the quick response.  I really appreciate it.

Two code bases is the only solution that I think makes any sense.  Either
you end up spending your life building a cross-platform engine to build the
application (and thus no time on the actual application...) or you build to
the lowest common denomenator which, well, stinks.

I'm not sure what your team feels would be the critical requirements and
concerns for a windows port.  Naturally I can think of a few concerns:

1. The Adium brand has tremendous goodwill associated with it (for good
reason).  Naturally a bad port could hurt the brand.  So I would suggest
that work on the port be kept quiet and whatever is released to selected
testers is released under a different code name.  Once substantially
complete you guys could decide whether or not the product deserves the Adium
name.

2. Depending on how the project is organized the windows port could defocus
your team from the mainline product.  This is definitely not desirable so as
much as possible we would want to avoid that.  The easiest way is to
minimize dependencies which happens quite naturally with two separate code
bases.

Naturally, I would like to understand your requirements and concerns.  And
I'm completely willing to talk about my past projects/experience/etc. if you
have any questions.

- g

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Forsythe [mailto:the_tick at brok3n.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 5:08 PM
To: Geoffrey Elliott
Cc: Adium Devs
Subject: Re: [Adium-feedback] I would like to port Adium to Windows XP

Hi Geo,

This is honestly the first offer to port to Windows that I think we can take
seriously. If you are fine with 2 codebases, I think we can definitely work
with you on it. If you wouldn't mind expanding on any points you may have
left out, go ahead and do it now.

Chris


Geoffrey Elliott wrote:

> Hi,
>
> My name is Geoffrey Elliott. I recently sold my small software company 
> to Google (we had a product similar to Konfabulator) and am looking 
> for a fun personal side project. I was previously a developer at 
> Microsoft for about 8 years working on projects as diverse as the 
> Windows Shell, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer 5, and more.
>
> I absolutely love Adium on my Mac and I'm absolutely sad that it 
> doesn't exist on Windows. Of course, I have the means of making it 
> happen so instead of whining about it, I'd like to know if I can try.
>
> A couple of notes about more philosophy on porting:
>
> 1. It wouldn't' be straight port. Menu items/features would be changed 
> to make it more Windows-natural. Although the spirit of the 
> application would be preserved, I wouldn't want to make the same 
> mistake MSFT did when they released that terrible Office for the Mac 
> release that looked just like Windows.
>
> 2. I'm not interested in "portable" code. Although it might make sense 
> for some components to be portable, I don't believe in #ifdef WINDOWS 
> #ifdef MAC. I'm fine with two codebases.
>
> In any event, I'd be interested in exploring this idea with you folks. 
> Either way, GREAT JOB.
>
> - g
>