The Meanwhile Project is an open implementation of the Lotus Sametime Community Client protocol. The heart of the Meanwhile Project is the Meanwhile library, providing the basic Lotus Sametime session functionality along with the core services; Presence Awareness, Instant Messaging, Multi-user Conferencing, Preferences Storage, Identity Resolution, and File Transfer. This extensible client interface allows additional services to be added to a session at runtime, allowing for simple integration of future service handlers such as the user directory and whiteboard and screen-sharing. The library can be used by IM clients such as pidgin to chat with Sametime users.