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The Psi project was founded in 2001 with a simple goal: to create a friendly, fully-functional IM client for the Jabber network.
Today, Psi is one of the most popular Jabber clients among the millions of users on the Jabber IM network. With the help of numerous volunteer contributors around the world, Psi's underlying open-source codebase has matured into a stable and feature-rich instant messaging platform.
Various groups have tapped Psi's Jabber/XMPP messaging technology and sponsored its development along the way, including large companies like Barracuda Networks, RealNetworks, and Portugal Telecom. Psi's foundation is also at the core of many other instant messaging applications, including SAPO Messenger, Jabbin, Barracuda IM, KDE's Kopete, and derived projects like Psi Daisy and Psi-psz.
In addition to the core IM technology, other independent projects have also been spun off from the Psi project. Flyspray started its life as Psi's custom bug tracking system, SleekBot is a helpful bot that was developed for our multi-user chat room, and the Qt Cryptographic Architecture (QCA) is a robust, cross-platform cryptographic API that provides the security infrastructure for Psi and other applications.
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The Psi Team
Although the Psi project has had countless contributors over the years, here are the main folks behind its development:
Justin Karneges, Project founder (homepage)
Justin started the Psi project and was the primary developer until 2004. These days he helps coordinate the team, maintains most of the networking and security parts of the application, and works on the IM Firewall at Barracuda Networks. Justin resides in California and is half-Greek; he enjoys the beach and baklava.
Kevin Smith, Project maintainer (homepage)
Kev has been contributing to the Psi community since 2002, and became the project leader in late 2004 when Justin stepped down. Born in Wales, he lives in England and when not thinking about the Psi roadmap or coding new features, his free time is spent practicing Tae Kwon Do, coding for one of his other open-source projects, serving on the XSF Council and playing music.
Michail Pishchagin (homepage)
This twenty-something hails from Russia, and specializes in C++ programming. He works mainly with the visible aspects of Psi, and is responsible for nearly all major graphical user interface features of the program since 2003.
Hal Rottenberg (homepage)
Hal is the webmaster for the Psi project. As such, he's responsible for keeping the content up-to-date and making sure everything stays running. By day, he supports the X-Force security lab at IBM Internet Security Systems. Hal lives in Georgia with his family, and enjoys coaching soccer for his sons.
Remko Tronçon (homepage)
This Belgian spends his days working as a software engineer, playing music, and writing all sorts of code for Psi. He likes to think of himself as the Mac OS guy on the Psi team, and therefore also has a sweet spot for commenting on the look and feel of Psi.
Maciek Niedzielski (homepage)
Quiet and shy (at least in real life), this student from Poland (although there are unconfirmed rumors that he may be Japanese) likes to watch anime, read manga, and — of course — create new features for Psi.
Martin Hostettler
This student living in Germany works on the Linux-specific parts of Psi. He believes open standards, such as XMPP, are very important and thus likes to improve Psi so that more people can enjoy chatting on the open network. In his free time he likes to read a lot and study the Japanese language.
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