source: doc/FAQ @ 3ce1bf6

Frequently Asked Questions about BitlBee
========================================

Well, maybe not exactly "Frequently", but definitely "Asked" ... mostly by
the developers :-)

Q: WTH were you guys on when you thought of that _weird_ name?
A: Though we live in The Netherlands and one of us even lives in Amsterdam,
   we're not on drugs ... most of the time.

Q: Okay, so the cops are so evil there, you can't even admit the truth, but
   WTH does BitlBee mean then?
A: There are a few explanations. But the most symbolical goes like: the two
   colors of the bee symbolize the two worlds between which the Bee flies. On
   the one hand there's the IM-networks, on the other is IRC.
   
   Truth be told, it's absolute nonsense. The biggest nutcase in the
   development team just played around with words for half an hour or so.
   BitlBee was the result. We liked it, we kept it. We lovingly shorten it
   to "the Bee" or even "het Bijtje" (Dutch for "the little Bee") sometimes.

Q: What is 'root' doing in my control channel? I didn't start the Bee as
   root.
A: 'root' is just the name for the most powerful user in BitlBee. Just like
   in the system, it is root who is the ... eh ... root of the
   functionality. Luckily, in BitlBee, root follows your orders (mostly), so
   no BOFHs there.
   
   We get some complaints from time to time that 'root' is a confusing name.
   Because of that name, some package maintainers have renamed root to, for
   example, BitlBee. We recognize that some people see that need. If the
   package maintainer hasn't renamed root, you can do this yourself with the
   'rename' command.
   
   The name root is not likely to change in the 'official' releases, though.
   We find the metaphor of root correct and feel that there is no important
   (security threatening) reason to change this non-creative piece of
   artistic creativity.

Q: When is $random_feature going to be implemented?
A: It depends on the feature. We keep a list of all wishlist "bugs" in our
   Bug Tracking system at https://bugs.bitlbee.org/

Q: The messages I send and/or receive look weird. I see weird characters and
   annoying HTML codes. Or, BitlBee does evil things when I send messages with
   non-ASCII characters!
A: You probably have to change some settings. To get rid of HTML in messages,
   see "help set strip_html". If you seem to have problems with your charset,
   see "help set charset".
   
   Although actually most of these problems should be gone by now. So if you
   can't get things to work well, you might have found a bug.

Q: Is BitlBee forked from Gaim?
A: BitlBee 0.7 was, sort-of. It contained a lot of code from Gaim 0.58
   (mainly the IM-code), although heavily modified, to make it work better
   with BitlBee. We were planning to keep BitlBee up-to-date with later Gaim
   versions, but this turned out to be very time-consuming because the API
   changed a lot, and we don't have the time to keep up with those changes
   all the time.
   
   These days, we replaced the Yahoo! code with libyahoo2 (which is a
   separate Yahoo! module. It's derived from Gaim, but separately
   maintained) and wrote our own MSN, Jabber and Twitter modules from
   scratch. Most of the API has also been changed, so by now the only traces
   of Gaim left are in the "nogaim" filename.
   
   There is good news for Gaim (or now Pidgin, of course) fans though:
   BitlBee can now be compiled to use libpurple for all IM interactions.
   This makes BitlBee a bit more resource-hungry, but adds support for many
   IM protocols/networks that couldn't be used from BitlBee so far.