Pidgin is the new name for Gaim; a very popular instant messenger client. The name change came about after a long-running legal battle with AOL. Gaim 2 had been in beta for over year, it turns out this was because of the looming legal action, according to the advice of Gaim's lawyers, keeping it in beta status gave them some sort of immunity while they agreed on the best course of action.

This means that when pidgin was released it was essentially Gaim 2 with a new name. There were a few bug fixes added on and a couple of interface tweaks. For example, the new unified status symbols, previously, a contacts status (i.e. online, away, etc.) was depicted using different icons depending upon which network they were using, eg. jabber, msn, icq etc.

All in all though, it is another quality release of one of the best pieces of free software out there and while it doesn't differ all that much from the last Gaim release it sets a good mark for all future releases.