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."

12 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. 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.
  3. 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 !

  4. 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

  5. $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? ---
  6. 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

  7. 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.

  8. 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
  9. 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.