Florian Queze and Quentin Castier kindly agreed to a brief interview to let us all know some more about Instantbird, the Mozilla-based instant messenger they released yesterday in a very early development form.
Mozilla Links: Tell us a little about you. What to you do, what’s your background?
Florian Queze: So we have been good friends for years (about 18 years I think, which is a lot for 21 years old students) ;-)).
Quentin has been involved with Mozilla but not as a code contributor. He helps spread Firefox and Thunderbird like we probably all do. He helped me to make the icons of Page Info look like they do.
Florian I know you developed the new Page Info dialog Firefox 3 will feature as a Google Summer of Code project. Could you share your experience on working with the Mozilla crew.
I don’t want to share specific SoC experience. Contributing to Mozilla has always been exciting for me. Submitting patches for review is, I think, an exciting process because when review is denied Mozilla reviewers help you a lot to understand what was wrong in what you did, and you can learn a lot from this. And when review is granted and your patch can land, you are happy because your contribution will improve a software million people use.
In this project, I’m the C++/XUL/JS developer. Quentin is the designer (logos, websites, …) and we take UI decisions together.
Why another instant messenger? What can users expect from Instantbird?
People should get more power over their IM clients. I enjoy being able to quickly write an extension for Firefox. I missed this in every IM client I tried. So I guess the goal is more freedom for extension developers, and more choice for the users.Also, Instantbird should work on all major platforms. The user should feel it’s the same app, but the app should integrate well with each system.Why Mozilla? Why Pidgin (libpurple)?
Mozilla offers the extensibility we love in Firefox. With XULRunner you get this extensibility “for free”.libpurple offers a good abstraction layer above the protocol specificities. We want to connect people, not screen names. We should do our best so that the protocols become details the user don’t care about. I think Pidgin already got this right.
I am impressed with Instantbird’s roadmap as it provides some good detail on what’s to be expected on future releases. Could you comment or do you have any idea or goal on what time could it get until 1.0?
Don’t forget the important note at the top of the roadmap: “Please note that the following information describes what we think we will do. What we will actually do and especially in which order can vary unexpectedly. You are warned!”I have no time estimation for future releases. We will release when we feel it’s ready or needed.I had the opportunity to spend a few months full time on this project. I don’t know if I will have this opportunity again. So the time between releases depends mostly on how much time I have to spend on this project, and on how much help I get from other people.
Let’s talk about extensibility. The roadmap mentions extensions for adding new networks capabilities, themes and sounds. What else do you envision for extensions?
The ultimate goal is that people get the instant messenger that *they* like. Not the one we like.Also, I think extensions are good to make crazy experiments, and integrate them later in the main code base if people like them.
What development platform are you currently using, for code development, code repository, builds and release. Would you seek Mozilla support on these areas like other projects including Calendar, Camino and SeaMonkey?
I’m currently developing on my MacBook, and using VMWare for Windows and Linux builds. We have a private SVN repository (not enough bandwidth on the server to make it public at the moment).We are not actively seeking Mozilla support, but would appreciate it.
The roadmap says video/audio for after 1.0. You mean across networks? Do you see this feasible at least from miles away as we are from that release?
By “after 1.0″ I mean: “We know some other clients have that and some people think it is an important feature, but we don’t plan do to it before 1.0.” Anyway we probably will need/want to wait for Pidgin to implement this in libpurple before we do.
Is Instantbird just a code name for now?
Not sure. Originally it was a code name. If people like it we will probably stick with it.
Same thing for the logo, we’ll wait for people’s reactions.
Do you have or plan to develop a business around this project? Have you considered financial aspects of the project?
We have no idea about financial aspects. Instantbird was the “funny project” of the summer. If someone comes up with a great idea so that I can spend my time on it, I will be more than happy to do so. Otherwise, I will probably develop it on my free time.
David Ascher, CEO of the nascent Mozilla messaging subsidiary, has shared some positive comments on Instantbird. Have you thought about making a Thunderbird or Firefox extension version of Instantbird, like Lightning?
We have thought about it. Currently we [haven't found a] way to make them better together.
We appreciate any help we can get. Comments are welcome, bug reports too.
I exchanged emails with Florian but he kept Quentin on the loop at all times so it pretty much picks both opinion and take on the questions.
Thanks to Florian and Quentin for taking the time to share some thoughts.
Developers are welcomed to play with the code and users to try the software and provide feedback via Instantbird.org’s contact page.
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