Psi in 2009
So Psi moves along sluggishly as usual. 0.13 was not released by Christmas. There were reasonable explanations for that. Despite this, I think 2009 will be a good year for Psi, and possibly its best year yet.
I suppose I can’t put words in anyone else’s mouth, but I have high hopes we’ll see Kev and Remko return to regular development after their XMPP book, and that Misha will finally be contributing Yandex stuff back. As for myself, these past few months stand as a record for the longest time Barracuda let me focus on Psi issues (which, being all Jingle stuff targetting Psi 0.14 or later, is easy to miss).
So, post-book and post-0.13, I predict a sudden surge of visible development, and more attention to submitted patches.
Despite the perception that Psi lags “behind” other client projects, keep in mind we have a number of significant features that have already been started (with major progress) and just need to be finished:
- Jingle audio and video
- Whiteboarding
- WebKit chat windows
- Revamped message history interface
- Revamped roster
- Plugins
- Bonjour chat
- Automatic updates
- Certificate/SmartCard authentication
- SSO
- XMPP URIs
Feel free to add more to this list. I often forget what’s on the back burner.
Do note that the above is not a list of priority features, just a list of features that are partially complete for one reason or another. The priorities going forward are a topic of a different message. I just wanted to show that when you count all of this unfinished stuff, Psi is farther along than it appears to be. The project has been around for so many years, and yet there is still so much to do. 
Here’s to Psi in 2009! I look forward to a great year with all of you.
