Hi, the last release of spark (2.6.3) was July 2011. Quite a long time, this is typically a sign of a dead project. Is the project in fact dead or is a new version planned? If yes, is there a planned release date? Why are there so few releases?
Hello Sebastian!
Spark is not dead! Quite the contrary! An increadible amount of work has been put into Spark over the past few years. Unfortunately, no new official release just yet (hopefully soon, we seem to be getting very close!), however, for advanced users with some programming knowledge are able to download the source code and compile it themselves. This gives you all the latest bugifxes, improvements, etc.
Spark is a pretty mature program at this point, so rapid releases aren’t happening (stability is valued over the latest icon change, etc – most changes are “under the hood” so-to-speak). Also, a lot of enterprises use Spark in their business, for either their own custom chat client (modified and re-branded Spark) and/or in-house use. Changes have to account for how enterprise users will be effected as well as non-enterprise users.
Stay tuned, there are several parties that would be interested in a release soon. In the meantime, if you’re feeling adventerous, you can check out the latest source code and make your own custom Spark: http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/source.jsp