Basically, the users of Pidgin said "We want X" (I forget what X was).

The developers said, well we don't want X and we only really make Pidgin for ourselves. It's just because we were feeling nice that we released it for you guys to use in the first place, we don't owe you anything.

Do you mean when they decided to remove the 'send message' button and people got so mad they forked the project? Or is there another Pidgin debacle that I don't know about yet?

I don't remember. The issue was relatively trivial IIRC, more a matter of tastes- it was just one of those rally points. Like a MacGuffin.