Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Dollar Campaign For Thunderbird Devs

Posted by timothy on from the reasonable-is-an-understatement dept.

Robert Accettura writes "In a rather comical spirit, Seth Spitzer (of ex-Netscape fame) is asking Thunderbird users to donate one dollar (or about 0.77 if you're in Europe) to Scott and David, the lead engineers of Thunderbird. Unlike Firefox, with quite a large community submitting patches, Scott and David have been working with much less community aid, and still managed to deliver a very solid product. This is a little way to thank them for managing to do so much with so little to keep our inboxes free of spam and easy to use."

37 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. About 0.77 what? by madaxe42 · · Score: 2

    Seriously, 0.77? 0.77 euro? Pounds? Swiss francs? Pounds of flesh? Last time I checked, the £-$ exchange rate was pushing $2 to the pound.

    1. Re:About 0.77 what? by byolinux · · Score: 2, Informative

      www.xe.com/ucc reveals 0.74 eurocent to the $.

      --
      Join the Free Software Foundation
    2. Re:About 0.77 what? by Jahf · · Score: 1

      "If your in Europe" ... so take the most common currency in Europe. The Euro would be about .74 to the Dollar (that's U.S. dollar for you picky Australians) today.

      And something tells me you knew what they meant.

      --
      It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
    3. Re:About 0.77 what? by QuantumRiff · · Score: 1

      Thats about .0000000000000000023 LOC (libraries Of Congress)! (estimate)

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
  2. MOD PARENT TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    The dollar is actually $2200 to the pound, I just weighed it.

  3. Snail mail addresses? by IO+ERROR · · Score: 4, Informative

    At the rates PayPal charges for credit card transactions it would be cheaper for me to mail each of them a dollar bill.

    --
    How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
    1. Re:Snail mail addresses? by Jahf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But many people (like myself and another on this thread) use PayPal for a floating Ebay account. No cost to me (in fact, I make a little interest on it since I went for the investment account). Lets me drop the random dollar here and there pretty easily.

      I don't think anyone is going to find fault in not doing this if you don't already have a PayPal account.

      Honestly, though I did send my $1, I don't see this getting much attention as the "Developer" section on /. is about the most dead topic ... as noted by the whopping 12 or so responses after an hour or two.

      --
      It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
    2. Re:Snail mail addresses? by fm6 · · Score: 1

      Sure its free to send money. But if you're doing commercial transactions (and I suspect any account that receives a lot of payments gets classified as "commercial"), you have to pay a fee. Not bad, as credit card payments go, but not free either.

    3. Re:Snail mail addresses? by fm6 · · Score: 1
      Do the math. First class postage costs 37 cents -- more if you're sending from outside the U.S. Add in the cost of the envelope, and nearly 1/3 of the total cost goes to transmission. That's many times what PayPal charges.

      If you want to send more money (and I'm not going to discourage you!) Snail Mail makes more sense. But not as much as you might think. You really need to use and check, and that imposes banking and handling costs on your recipient.

    4. Re:Snail mail addresses? by IO+ERROR · · Score: 1

      Hey, I got a bunch of free postage from stamps.com, may as well put it to good use.

      --
      How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
    5. Re:Snail mail addresses? by ibbey · · Score: 1

      As far as I know, accounts are not automatically classified as commericial. According to the site "Personal accounts can send payments to and receive payments from, anyone with an email address. Business accounts can send and receive payments, and also accept credit card payments." I believe there are other benefits to a commercial account, such as automatic nightly deposits to a bank account, but if you don't need those features, you can stick with a personal account.

    6. Re:Snail mail addresses? by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 1

      That's many times what PayPal charges.

      Hm, but according to the Paypal fee schedule...

      1.9% + $0.30 USD to 2.9% + $0.30 USD ...sending $1 would cost $0.32-0.33 USD. That's almost the same as a postage stamp.

      Plus, if you sent via postal mail the recipient would actually get $1, but it would cost you $1 + 1 stamp. Through Paypal, it costs you nothing, but the recipient only gets about $0.68 USD.

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
    7. Re:Snail mail addresses? by dmadole · · Score: 1

      .9% + $0.30 USD to 2.9% + $0.30 USD ...sending $1 would cost $0.32-0.33 USD. That's almost the same as a postage stamp.

      Plus, if you sent via postal mail the recipient would actually get $1, but it would cost you $1 + 1 stamp. Through Paypal, it costs you nothing, but the recipient only gets about $0.68 USD

      You do realize you could send $1.34, right?

      That would give the recipient either $1.00 or $1.01 and still save you $0.03, not even considering the cost of the envelope or the check itself.

      Hint: ($1.00 + $0.30) / (1 - 2.9%) = $1.34.

    8. Re:Snail mail addresses? by fm6 · · Score: 1

      I'm so happy for you.

  4. Okay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, after the insane popularity of Firefox, i thought Thunderbird was going to recieve a similar reception with hundreds of programmers swarming to help write it.

    The team has done a great job.

    LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN !

  5. Credentials? by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ok, so perhaps some of us know who this Seth is, and why we should trust him enough to actually send money to him to forward to the Tbird developers.

    But I'd wager most Thunderbird users don't, me included.

    The site has no links to information about Seth, his name is just a mailto: link

    The FAQ says:

    Q: Is this a scam?
    A: No. But if you don't trust me you could donate your dollar to the Mozilla Foundation. See http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/donate.html

    My advice - do just that, or get the developer's email addresses and donate direct to them through paypal. If you give money to random people on the web, well, more fool you.

    --
    NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
    1. Re:Credentials? by asa · · Score: 2, Informative

      Seth's a good guy. He was responsible for much of the Mozilla mail code that lives on in Thunderbird.

      You don't have to take my word for it, either. Google for Seth or look at Bonsai and Bugzilla over at the Mozilla project to see how much he's contributed over the years.

      --Asa

  6. $US4.90 on its way by loddington · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have transferred the entire balance of my paypal account. All $4.90 of it.

    Thanks for the great work guys.

    Ps. can we have a button on the toolbar that launches your default browser (firefox)?

    --
    --- Who put this sig here? ---
  7. I just sent my $1.00 by johnnyoxford · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Coincidently, I just switched over to Thunderbird today. I would have paid more if the link allowed me to. I'll bet others would too.

    1. Re:I just sent my $1.00 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Use the link at the bottom of the page....

  8. Re:Thunderbird? Ugh, they should pay me! by mike_sucks · · Score: 1

    That old chestnut again?

    Didn't I see you at the Microsoft campus the other day?

    --
    -- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
  9. Mirror by digitalgimpus · · Score: 1

    Here's a mirror of the page.

    Mirror

    Payments go through: sspitzer (@) sspitzer.org just as the original page (he's collecting for them).

  10. Re:Thunderbird users by asa · · Score: 2, Informative

    Thunderbird users. What? Both of them?

    Actually, there were over 1 million downloads of Thunderbird 1.0 in the first ten days after the release and the total is over one a quarter million today, two weeks after the release.

    --Asa

  11. Million Schmillion... by parvenu74 · · Score: 1

    So Thunderbird 1.0 had a million downloads.... so what? I for one downloaded it more out of curiostiy than anything else. I played with it, used it for a couple days, and then went back to exclusilvely using only GMail. Thunderbird has a LONG way to do to catch up with even Outlook Express, much less "real" email and collaboration programs. They might get their act together just in time to get slapped to the back of the bus when Google releases a client app for GMail, which leaves me with the nagging question: who really gives a flip about Thunderbird?

    1. Re:Million Schmillion... by cryptor3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      who really gives a flip about Thunderbird?

      I do. That's three. I use it for imap.

    2. Re:Million Schmillion... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      *** Cue the Church Lady from SNL: ***
      Well isn't that SPECIAL!!!

      Thunderbird is not the only IMAP client out there, and like the grandparent post pointed out, it's nowhere close to even beating Outlook Express. I've had more trouble with Thunderbird going blonde on me and simply crashing that I would be embarassed to be associated with it from a developers' standpoint.

      Personally, I think Evolution is MUCH better for IMAP mail anyway...

    3. Re:Million Schmillion... by mc_barron · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I give a flip.
      I use it daily for heavy e-mail use. Never crashes, works beautifully with both of my imap accounts. I don't see what you find so undesireable about it - I think it is a slim (getting there at least), well designed e-mail client that puts usability at the top of it's goals. I wouldn't trade it for any other client.

    4. Re:Million Schmillion... by lachlan76 · · Score: 1

      While I agree with you about Evolution being better, we don't all have the luxury of a real OS.

      I would however be *VERY* interested if there was a Windows port, because although I use Linux, I know many people who don't.

      And anyway, what is a feature of Outlook Express which the average user needs that is not in Thunderbird?

    5. Re:Million Schmillion... by lachlan76 · · Score: 1

      Thunderbird isn't meant to replace Outlook, Evolution does that. Thunderbird replaces Outlook Express, something, which from my experience, it does very well.

      I use it all the time when I'm forced to use Windows, although most of the time when I'm on Linux I use Evolution.

    6. Re:Million Schmillion... by cryptor3 · · Score: 1

      How about the program actually terminating when you close it? Even with Thunderbird 1.0 I still need to pull up the Task Manager and manually kill the bastard half of the time.

      File a bug report. I can't reproduce it, but if I could, I would. My Thunderbird closes cleanly every time. Maybe it's Windows that's messing things up :-)

      Another somewhat nice feature of Outlook Express is the ability to set up a separate SMTP server for each account you create.

      From the Thunderbird SMTP Options dialog, Only one outgoing server (SMTP) needs to be specified, even if you have several mail accounts. But you can specify more than one SMTP if you need to. Sure you could specify a different SMTP server for each one (which occasionally helps with false positives from mail server anti-spam software). But this doesn't come up very often. If you really need to, you can add more SMTP servers to the list through the Advanced setup.

  12. I wouldn't mind a dollar per user... by cperciva · · Score: 1, Insightful

    With almost ten thousand people having used FreeBSD Update to download and install binary security patches, I certainly wouldn't mind getting $1 from each user. Right now I'm averaging around $0.1 per user -- most of which came from slashdot.jp readers who don't even use FreeBSD Update, and all of which went directly into buying new hardware for building the security updates.

    Then of course there's my binary diff tool, which is being used by somewhere upwards of a million people, thanks to Apple's decision to use it for reducing the size of their security updates. (Ok, technically bsdiff isn't being used by all those people; bspatch is, however.) My total income from this? $0. I haven't earned a cent.

    Am I bitter about not earning any money from all this? Of course not -- if I wanted to make money, I wouldn't have been giving this work away for free in the first place. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't mind getting some monetary return for all my work.

    And that's the important point to remember here: Almost all open source developers would love to get something for their work; but if they get anything, it won't be anywhere near $1 per user.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
  13. And if you don't have Paypal? by Twylite · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously, some of us don't have Paypal accounts, and can't get them. Paypal isn't available in all countries. It sucks. Any suggestions?

    --
    i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
  14. Thunderbird donations / Thunderbird problems by myke113 · · Score: 1

    I'll donate more than one dollar when they fix the bug that doesn't allow IMAP accounts to auto-purge junk mail after so many days.. Anyone else have this problem? Or maybe I'll donate and then ask them about this?

    --

    -Myke
    myke@compassionatecoalition.org
    http://www.compassionatecoalition.org
  15. Re:Thunderbird? Ugh, they should pay me! by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 1

    So you're saying that you think I'm making this up? And for the benefit of some corporation? If so, fuck you.

  16. Re:Thunderbird? Ugh, they should pay me! by mike_sucks · · Score: 1

    No, but you're spreading FUD. I've used TBird since the first Linux build came out and I've never encountered the problem you described. Neither has the vast majority of tbird's other users, or else the bug would have been fixed by now.

    --
    -- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
  17. Re:Thunderbird? Ugh, they should pay me! by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 1
    Oh, so you, on your system, have replicated every major bug in all the software you use? Wow!

    Let me guess, you've done a lot of drunk driving and never had a problem, so all that FUD about it from all those insidious mothers is totally baseless.

  18. Re:Thunderbird? Ugh, they should pay me! by mike_sucks · · Score: 1

    "Oh, so you, on your system, have replicated every major bug in all the software you use?"

    No, but given the large number of people that use tbird and the very small number of people who have encountered your bug, it is most probably statstically insignificant (I'll do the stats and work out how insignificant it actually is, if you want). So it isn't surprising that it hasn't been fixed.

    To go about saying "don't use tbird because of this bug" is akin to saying "don't fly in an aircraft because I was almost in an air crash once" or "don't go swimming because I almost drowned once".

    In the computer industry, this this is known as spreading FUD.

    /mike

    PS: I don't own a car because I'm not a selfish bastard, and I've never driven one drunk, again because I'm not a selfish bastard. Have you?

    --
    -- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"