BitlBee 3.0, more Bitl than ever.

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:05:34 +0200

Finally, the next major release is there! Almost five years after the last major release, it was about time. Who would've thought that this one would take even longer than going from 0.7 to 1.0 (which "only" took three years)?

There are so many changes in this version, including some very old major requests like a complete core rewrite, OTR encryption, a significant upgrade of the MSN protocol module, optional support for libpurple, file transfers.. The last one used to be the "Duke Nukem Forever" in the BitlBee community. Looks like we won!

This all seems enough to bump the major version number. Since, looking at the timing of previous versions, it's waaaay late to release a BitlBee 2 at this point, let's go for 3.0 immediately. :-)

This release doesn't come with the traditional "release speech" (see the speech that came with 1.2), but with a comic as you can see on your right. Many thanks to Randall Munroe for drawing it!

For the curious, there's also a short screencast that demonstrates some of the new features. If you haven't tried the multi-channel stuff yet, do take a look!

Anyway, go and download the thing. Many people were running this stuff from Bazaar already, so join the club. :-) Have fun, and thanks everyone for your continued support! (And in all modesty, let me remind you guys that we're also on Flattr. :-)