Pandion 2.6.106 Stable Release

The Pandion 2.6.106 update includes better authentication support and fixes for common annoyances and stability issues. Thanks to everyone who helped by reporting issues and contributing patches.

Download

The latest stable version of Pandion can be downloaded directly from:
http://pandion.im/pandion_setup.msi

User Interface Improvements

• Prevent focus stealing by incoming chat messages.
• Install to ProgramFiles if running with sufficient access rights. Fall back to LocalAppData if running with restricted access rights.
• More clearly visible time stamps in the chat dialog.
• Correctly restore window position on Citrix terminals.
• Stopped focus stealing by the "user is online" notifications.
• Solved links not opening links in default browser in some circumstances.
• Keep the contact list as minimized on automatic startup.
• Give focus to the text input box when changing between tabs.
• Fixed display of forum post titles in welcome screen.

Protocol Improvements

• New authentication mechanism supported: SASL SCRAM SHA-1
• Improved GSSAPI compatibility for Integrated Windows Authentication (Single Sign On) in certain network layouts.
• Corrected SASL PLAIN authentication.

Stability Improvements

• Fixed crash in Welcome Screen when pressing OK button.
• Fixed crash when denied access to the community activity feed through some proxy servers.
• Fixed script errror when closing chat dialog.
• Fixed Visual C++ Runtime errors.
• Fixed XML parsing on disconnect bug.
• Fixed emoticon installation on Windows usernames with non-ASCII characters.

Updated Translations

• Brazilian Portuguese
• French
• Japanese
• Russian
• Spanish

Pandion 2.6.90 Stable Release

The Pandion team is proud to announce the release of Pandion 2.6.90 stable. This release is the culmination of our effort over the past months to create a reliable and well tested application. All known major bugs have been addressed. Many features have been improved and added. Large parts of the application were redesigned and rearchitected. No animals were harmed.

Download

The latest stable version of Pandion can be downloaded directly from:
http://pandion.im/pandion_setup.msi

Notable Improvements

• Shiny new user interface theme.
• Contact list keyboard search for easier access to contacts. Supports find-as-you-type.
• Multi-row tabs to keep unlimited conversations open.
• Additional emoticon styles.
• HTTP proxy support when downloading extensions and updates.
• Faster sign-in process thanks to improved networking layer.
• Fixed many crashes, script errors and disconnection bugs.
• Redesigned Sign In dialog, Welcome Screen, Auto-Update dialog and About dialog.
• Single Sign On (SSO) support for the SASL mechanisms GSSAPI, NTLM and SP-NEGO.
• Update track selection: Help to test by choosing from stable, beta or development.
• Better standards compliance and protocol tweaks for compatibility with other XMPP software.
• Windows Installer compatible *.msi setup package for easier network deployment through Group Policy Objects (GPO).
• Right to left user interface for Arabic and Hebrew.
• Total of 29 translations: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese.

EULA No More

Pandion 2.6.90 is published under GNU General Public License 3 or later. This is a copyright license without restrictions on usage. There is simply no End User License Agreement (EULA) anymore. Enjoy freedom!

Update Instructions

• Manual
  Download and run the installer. Pandion will uninstall any older vesion, install the update, and launch automatically.
• From Pandion 2.6.x
  The auto-update service in Pandion 2.6 automatically downloads and installs the update. When the update is ready users are prompted to restart Pandion.
• From legacy Pandion 2.5
  Users of the legacy Pandion 2.5 version are notified through the auto-update mechanism. This mechanism is not compatible with certain types of HTTP proxy servers. As a fallback the download page opens in the default web browser to manually download and install the Pandion update.
  Note: The Pandion 2.6.90 installer automatically removes Pandion 2.5 from the system before deploying the new version.

Development Facts

Since starting work on Pandion 2.6 there have been:

• 73 issues reported, 42 closed
• 90 automated builds
• 389 source code commits
• 285 discussions by 418 people
• 6,286 daily users
• 39,615 auto-updates

Downloads and Updates Report

Last December Pandion 2.6 was made available for download from the official website. Before that only a handful of brave testers were using the development builds.

The overwhelming majority of users are still running Pandion 2.5, released over four years ago, and probably oblivious to the recent rebirth of the project. But Pandion 2.6 is stable enough for release so soon all Pandion 2.5 users will receive an update notification.

I collected data on the last two months of Pandion 2.6 distribution. Three accurate data sources are available:

1. FeedBurner: Number of daily users and auto-updates.
   The Pandion 2.6 update mechanism polls an Atom feed proxied by FeedBurner. This service provides detailed statistics on the number of users ("Subscribers"), as well as their Pandion version and language setting by parsing the User-Agent HTTP header.
2. Google Analytics: Website visitors and downloads.
   The pandion.im website contains a Google Analytics tracking cookie and a custom hook to track manual downloads of the Pandion installer. These downloads are served directly by the pandion.im web server and do not add to the download count of the SourceForge data.
3. SourceForge: Auto-update downloads.
   When a new version of Pandion is available all clients automatically download it from the SourceForge content delivery network. Occasionally someone will manually visit this page to download a development build but this is likely negligible.

So what does it add up to?

Blue: Usage is climbing at a high rate, week after week. This is a good sign! The weekend dips indicate that Pandion is used in many professional environments.

Red: The spikes are updates of stable builds. The huge majority of users is on the stable update track. The beta and development tracks are much less popular but important nonetheless. Making it easy for testers to try beta and development builds has helped us find and fix many bugs.

Blue: Download traffic is stable. Combined with the usage growth shown above this implies that people continue using Pandion rather than just downloading, trying and uninstalling. Again a good sign.

This graph is a little deceptive. The Y-axis scale is logarithmic. And the X-axis shows version numbers, not dates.

So this graph shows that 2.6.70 and 2.6.86 are orders of magnitude more popular than any other version. That is because they are both the stable builds. What's interesting is that 2.6.86 reached the same number of auto-updates in a few days as 2.6.70 reached in about two months.

Conclusion

This provides a little insight into Pandion 2.6 usage and a point of reference for future growth. I would like to automate this data collection and analysis. Having a live graph of our progress towards world domination would be fun and motivating.

Pandion Team at FOSDEM 2010 and XMPP Summit 8

In a few days, from Feb 5th to 7th, it's time for the largest free software developer conference in Europe. The 2010 edition of FOSDEM takes place in Brussels and has a strong line-up of topics and speakers.

Simultaneously and also in Brussels the XMPP Standards Foundation is organising its twice yearly XMPP Summit. It starts on Friday, a day before FOSDEM, with an XMPP Hackfest where developers from different projects join forces to tackle compatibility issues and discuss new ideas. Many XSF members are giving talks at FOSDEM on XMPP and will also be there to discuss the future of XMPP on Monday at the Summit.

Both Pandion developers (Sebastiaan and Dries) will be in attendance at these events. We look forward to meeting like minded open source developers and XMPP enthousiasts. Drop us a line if you want to meet up.

Call for Transliteration of "Pandion" Name

To make Pandion instant messenger more globally accessible it supports internationalisation (i18n) of its user interface. Pandion is already available in 26 languages thanks to community contributions. This has helped tremendously in spreading Pandion to users around the world.

But there is one step which has been left out: the name "Pandion" is still in Roman script. So yesterday I implemented support for a transliterated name and now there are several localisations: Pandion (Roman), Пандион (Cyrillic), Pan-di-on (Vietnamese), بانديون (Arabic), पैन्डीऑन (Devanagari), پندین (Urdu).

If you, or someone you know, can write in any non-Roman script, please help by supplying a transliterated version of the "Pandion" name. Any Unicode-based script can be supported.

Please submit your proposed transliteration on the Pandion forum as a new topic so that others can collaborate.

The following scripts are especially desired since the application has already been translated into them:

• Chinese Simplified
• Chinese Traditional
• Greek
• Japanese
• Korean

The transliteration is separate from translating the entire user interface. For example even though currently there is no Hindi translation of Pandion, the name can already be transliterated into Devanagari.

From a PR/brand management perspective this is a delicate operation. For each script or region there could be different transliterations which must be considered on a case by case basis.

If you would also like to help out by translating Pandion please have a look at the Translation how-to guide on the wiki.

Edit: 15/11/09 - Added Arabic, Devanagari, Urdu

Resolution Achieved Regarding RhymBox/Pandion Dispute

Original article:
http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2009-11-03.shtml

XMPP Standards Foundation Plays Key Role in Successful Conclusion

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA, USA; BRUGES, BELGIUM; AND DENVER, COLORADO, USA; NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Justin Fisher and Sebastiaan Deckers are pleased to announce their settlement of ownership over the RhymBox instant messaging software code and domain name.

Messrs. Fisher and Deckers entered into an agreement in May 2003 to further develop the RhymBox instant messaging client originally created by Deckers and RhymBox developer Dries Staelens. This work was to occur under the auspices of RhymBox LLC, a Florida company that Mr. Fisher formed for the purpose. Unfortunately, through a series of misunderstandings and misconceptions, the RhymBox developers removed their support from the venture in June 2004 and re-released their RhymBox client under the name Pandion.

Because of the longstanding controversy over the RhymBox name and code, the parties involved recently decided to reconcile their differences. The agreement, mediated by Peter Saint-Andre, Executive Director of the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF), contains the following points:

1. The parties affirm that ownership of all intellectual property related to RhymBox and Pandion belong to Sebastiaan Deckers.


2. The rhymbox.com domain has been transferred to Peter Saint-Andre for safekeeping, and will be subsequently transferred to Sebastiaan Deckers upon completion of all outstanding items agreed upon by the parties.


3. RhymBox, LLC had been annulled as a corporate entity. Its last official act was to rescind all claims to the RhymBox name and codebase.


4. Each party apologizes for and retracts any public statements they have made regarding their past conflict and will work to remedy any outstanding harm caused by such statements.


5. The parties affirm that they are no longer in conflict, freeing each side to pursue new opportunities related to instant messaging software and services.

Justin Fisher said: "I want to personally extend my gratitude to Peter Saint-Andre and Sebastiaan Deckers for their cooperation and assistance in working out this agreement. During my involvement with the RhymBox project, I had an opportunity to work with some amazingly talented individuals and participate in the coming of age of the XMPP protocol. Although we did not complete our vision, we did succeed in being the first to bring VoIP to a Jabber client. Fortunately, and to the benefit of the community, the project will go on and will continue its place as a leading XMPP application. We wish everyone involved the best of success."

Sebastiaan Deckers commented: "I thank Peter Saint-Andre and Justin Fisher for their respective roles in establishing this conclusion to the RhymBox saga. This agreement provides suitable closure to the RhymBox brand as it is absorbed by Pandion. The project has already continued for several years under the name Pandion and will continue to do so. This agreement also strengthens the Pandion open source community with absolute legal confidence. The neutral authority of the XSF and the unique position of Peter Saint-Andre in the XMPP community reassure Pandion users to continue enjoying their favourite instant messaging client. As Pandion development continues, the entire XMPP community will benefit from this long-overdue resolution."

Peter Saint-Andre added: "Justin Fisher and Sebastiaan Deckers have impressed me with their professionalism throughout the process of mediating this matter. Despite the sensitive nature of their original disagreement, both parties came together to reach a mutually agreeable settlement. I look forward to continued contributions from both Justin and Sebastiaan regarding Jabber/XMPP technologies."

About the XMPP Standards Foundation

The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) builds open protocols for presence, instant messaging, and real-time communication and collaboration on top of the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), and also provides information and infrastructure to the worldwide community of Jabber/XMPP developers, service providers, and end users. Widely considered the lingua franca of instant messaging, XMPP is an Internet standard for presence, real-time messaging, and streaming Extensible Markup Language (XML) data that grew out of the popular Jabber open-source technologies first released in 1999. With approval of XMPP by the IETF in 2004, the XSF continues to develop XMPP extensions that meet the needs of its many stakeholders: open-source and commercial developers (including Apple, HP, Nokia, and Sun), organizations large and small (including the U.S. defense establishment and most Wall Street investment banks), Internet and mobile service providers (including Google, NTT, Portugal Telecom, Twitter, and Facebook), and an estimated 50+ million end users worldwide.

For further information, visit <http://www.xmpp.org/> or contact XSF Executive Director Peter Saint-Andre.

About Dialog Redesign

The About dialog is one of the least useful features in any application yet, legally speaking, one of the most important. Pandion became free-as-in-freedom software a few months ago and this new About dialog reflects that situation better.

A few remarks about the new dialog:

• The language in the dialog separates the intellectual property and copyright of the source code from the brand trademark, i.e. the "Pandion" logo and name. I hope this clarifies the freedom for anyone to create derivatives under a different name. In fact all Pandion source code is structured so that branding properties can be changed from a single meta file (/Client/settings/brand.xml).
• The minimalistic design mimics that of Google Chrome to provide a familiar and professional looking user experience. Let's hope the Chromium team appreciates this sincere form of flattery.
• The decision to remove the names of contributors from the About dialog was made to reduce maintenance overhead. The full list of credits is published at the Pandion website's About section. This makes it easier to update the list and allows for search engine indexing of all names, a more useful way for contributors to gain bragging rights.