Google just announced its mentoring organizations for its 2008 Summer of Code. I was really happy to see that the open-source Mac instant messaging client, Adium, was selected as one of the mentoring organizations.
Looking at the list of ideas Adium has for its incoming student developers, however, I'm a little bummed by the lack of ambition. Or, rather, creativity.
On tap? Adding the ability to remote control a Mac through Adium (similar to Apple's iChat) and video conferencing support (similar to Apple's iChat), plus improving group chat capabilities. These are nice to haves, but they're simply replications of proprietary products. The reason I use Adium instead of iChat is for all the other things that Adium does better than iChat (customizability being the top reason).
Yes, I know that Summer of Code projects are for relatively newbie developers with only a summer to work. Even so, I would have preferred to see Adium looking for ways to embed IM into email and/or browsers, perhaps letting me simultaneously watch a YouTube video with a friend while chatting about it, etc. Fun things that correspond to the way I use IM.
Anyway, I guess I shouldn't complain. I'm just glad so many great projects are getting assistance, like Audacity and the Internet Archive. I just wish that Handbrake would have submitted something....