[Freetalk-dev] Submission for GNU Software Evaluation

[Anand Babu]

* General Information
** Do you agree to follow GNU policies?
   If your program is accepted to be part of the GNU system, it means
   that you become a GNU maintainer, which in turn means that you will
   need to follow GNU policies in regards to that GNU program.  
   (Summarized below, see maintainers document for full descriptions.)

Freetalk> Yes we agree and we are following the GNU policies already.

** Package name and version:
   
Freetalk> Freetalk 0.42.1

** Author Full Name <Email>: 

Freetalk>

   Freetalk Core Team:
    - Anand Avati <address@hidden>
    - Anand Babu <address@hidden>
    - Vikas Gorur <address@hidden>

   Documentation:
    - Harshavardhana Ranganath <address@hidden>

   Logo and Website:
     Ravi Shekhar S <address@hidden>

** URL to home page (if any):
   
Freetalk> http://freetalk.nongnu.org

** URL to sources (if any):

Freetalk>
   http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/freetalk/freetalk-0.42.1.tar.gz

   (I recommend you to check the CVS version which is getting ready for
   another release)

   # export CVS_RSH=ssh
   # cvs -z3 -d:ext:address@hidden:/cvsroot/freetalk co freetalk

** Brief description of the package:

Freetalk>
  Freetalk is a console based Jabber client. It features a readline
  interface with completion of buddy names, commands, and even
  ordinary English words!. Freetalk is extensible, configurable, and
  scriptable through a Guile interface.

* Code
** Dependencies:
    Please list the package's dependencies (source language,
    libraries, etc.).

Freetalk>
   libreadline (GNU Readline)
   libguile    (GNU Guile - GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for
                Extension) 
   libglib2.0  (The GLib library of C routines development and runtime
                packages) 
   GnuTLS-1.0.0 or higher
                built with ./configure --with-included-libtasn1
   loudmouth-1.0 or higher
               - http://ftp.imendio.com/pub/imendio/loudmouth/src/
               - compiled with ./configure --prefix=/usr
               - built with SSL/TLS support.

** Configuration & compilation:
    It might or might not use Autoconf/Automake, but it should meet
    GNU Standards.  Even packages which are written in interpreted
    languages and thus do not require compilation, such as Perl,
    Python, and PHP, should follow these standards, because it gives
    installers a uniform way to set installation directories, etc.
    Please see:
    http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Configuration.html
    http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Makefile-Conventions.html

Freetalk>   
    We use Autoconf/Automake.

** Documentation:
    We recommend using Texinfo (http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/)
    for documentation, and writing both reference and tutorial
    information in the same manual.  Please see
    http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.html

Freetalk>
   We use Texinfo and a minimal man page.

* Licensing:
   This is crucial.  Both the software itself *and all dependencies*
   (third-party libraries, etc.) must be free software in order to be
   included in GNU.
   
   Please see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html for a
   practical guide to which licenses are free (for GNU's purposes) and
   which are not.  Please give specific url's to any licenses involved
   that are not listed on that page.

Freetalk>
   Freetalk     - GNU GPL v2 or later.
   libreadline  - GNU GPL v2 or later.
   libguile     - GNU GPL v2 or later.
   libglib2.0   - GNU LGPL.
   GnuTLS-1.0.0 - GNU LGPL.
   Loudmouth    - GNU LGPL.

* Similar projects:
   Please explain what motivated you to write your package, and search
   at least the Free Software Directory
   (http://www.gnu.org/directory/)
   for projects similar to yours.  If any exist, please also explain
   what the principal differences are.

Freetalk>
   All the ones listed under Free Software Directory are GUI
   based. I know there are other console based free jabber clients
   around.

   * jabber.el - a minimal jabber client for GNU Emacs
               http://emacs-jabber.sourceforge.net
   * Cabber  - a curses based Jabber client.
             http://cabber.sourceforge.net/, 
   * MCABBER - a small Jabber curses client.
             http://www.lilotux.net/~mikael/mcabber/
   * IMCom   - a command-line Jabber client written in Python.
             http://imcom.floobin.cx/ (SITE DOWN)

   But none of them are like Freetalk. Freetalk is extensible,
   scriptable and has readline front-end. It is also possible to write
   bots, jabber tools using scripting interface 
   (#!/usr/bin/freetalk -s), or extend it like GNU Emacs.
   Its readline front-end puts the readline tricks to very good
   use. Users of freetalk (and a previous similar freehoo project) are
   religious abouts its user interface. Out of all of them, Freetalk is
   the closest one to GNU Coding Standards.

* Any other information, comments, or questions:

  Freetalk> Nothing else for now.

-- 
Anand Babu 
GPG Key ID: 0x62E15A31
Blog [http://ab.freeshell.org]              
The GNU Operating System [http://www.gnu.org]