Most likely.

Maybe its fixed in rtcomm SVN? If this exists? Maybe their development page says more. You won't be the only one who noticed this thats for sure.

If you're not scared for command line you can consider on your server running SSH + Bitlbee (recently updated since suffered from same problem as Pidgin) + Irssi + Screen, then from NIT SSH to the server. I like these solutions because they make the NIT more a thin client. Especially for networked applications they work; you need a network anyway to use the application.

An application like Kopete can be fixed by simply changing the configuration to update to ICQ protocol v6. Nifty IMO.