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Thunderbird to Leave Mozilla Foundation
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Mozilla Thunderbird is to move to a 'new separate organizational setting' as the Mozilla Foundation focuses more and more on Mozilla Firefox. Citing a blog post by Chief Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker, MozillaZine outlines the three possibilities for Thunderbird that are being considered: 'one is to create a entirely new non-profit, which would offer maximum independence for Thunderbird but is organisationally complex. A second option is to create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird, which would keep the Mozilla Foundation involved but may mean that Thunderbird continues to be neglected in favour of Firefox. A final option is to recast Thunderbird as community project, similar to SeaMonkey, and set up a small independent services and consulting company to continue development. However, there are concerns over how the Thunderbird product, project and company would interact'. Lead Thunderbird developer Scott MacGregor favours the third option."
Before it even hit MozillaZine... and what do I get? Nothing.
You have to wonder why thunderbird doesn't compete as well in the email marketspace as firefox does in the browser market space. I suspect its because thunderbird doesn't really offer anything more than its competitors and because it has few must-have extensions. But it could also be the prevalence of web mail. So what would make a killer email client?
Philosophy.
If the Mozilla Foundation isn't as interested in Thunderbird, why would a subsidiary of it (ala the 2nd option) or a brand-new entity (ala the 1st) bring a whole lot of enthusiasm? Let the users have it.
Thank God for evolution.
just curious, since Google's deal with mozilla brought in a lot of cash, did Mozilla ever pipe any of that into Thunderbird? If they did then how is it helping to seperate Thunderbird like this?
What does this mean for the Eudora on TBird project?
sheesh, talk about "not invented here" syndrome. We're too busy focusing on the one child we're really proud of to deal with a lesser product like you. Shoo now, we're busy.
I see this type of high brow attitude all the time from FOSS projects. The leaders get on these power trips and start making edicts and acting like they're royalty. Like the FreeSwan project that refused to follow the IPSEC RFC (the fucking RFC!) and implement MANDATORY single DES, because they felt that DES was insecure. But guess what, if you don't implement a MANDATORY part of an RFC, you are not compatible, and sure enough, a bunch of commercial IPSEC clients wouldn't work with FreeSwan because of the missing modes.
Or Dan Bernstein's djbdns, which won't work in an inetd setting -- because DJB doesn't like inetd and forces you to use some halfcocked replacement he invented. Even though inetd is about as standard to unix systems as init and syslogd. But no, DJB has decreed: inetd must go! Let them eat cake!
Just two examples of many. And now the royal decrees are flowing from Mozilla. Great.
But why do I keep using it? Because I hope it will become as good as Firefox and switching email clients is never as straightforward as one would like. And I'm not saying FF does not have flaws, in my opinion benefits outweighs the flaws. I'm not sure if this is true with TB. I have no idea, and I'm probably not alone failing to predict the future, if a new status for Thunderbird will actually help the project or not... I guess we'll find out in a few months/years!
Animoog.org
I use Thnderbird at home. Every day @ work using Outlook reminds me why I prefer Thunderbird.
I do have some gripes when it comes to the way most extensions and plugins are handled for it though, much like other people are saying...
I'd rather see it stay in the Mozilla foundation but if it must leave then I would prefer the third option as well. The second one really sucks...
This is disappointing news, and begs the question why the Mozilla Foundation can't provide the needed resources to Thunderbird?
Given the Mozilla Foundation HAS a substantial amount of money, presumably spinning Thunderbird out into a separate entity will mean Thunderbird will have even less money than it has today because it can not be cross-subsidised by Firefox's search revenues. Spinning Thunderbird out, which will cost it more and earn it less, doesn't sound like a recipe for success if your problem is lack of resources.
I, for one, am not looking forward to the idea of having Tbird as a community project, unless it is headed by a small team of very focused individuals. A mass free-for-all will simply destroy it due to feature bloat and a multitude of ideas around what an email client should be.
What should an email client do? How about -- email. Just email. Not email and newsgroups, not email and collaboration, not email and Facebook -- just plain old simple email. Sure, I'll concede to HTML email for you folks who can't stand to not have a little color in your lives and insist on spamming my box with your yellow backgrounds and pink text, but it's still email.
Tbird is awesome and makes almost no waves because of a) marketing -- the browser wars are much more publicized, b) marketing -- Microsoft isn't really trying to take over the world with Outlook, because they know it sucks, and c) marketing -- There's not much word-of-mouth going on because email mostly works with just about any client and people put up with it, so there's not as much of a scramble for a "good" email client.
I love the app. It works and works and works and doesn't break and doesn't screw up one of the most important things in my online life, electronic mail. I don't want to see it backburnered by the Foundation, either, but at the same time, I'm happier thinking that the Foundation has their finger on where it's going and so far, I trust that they're not going to make it suck. So I'd be preferable to leaving it their hands for that reason.
Blog,Twitter
Whatever little Mozilla Foundation is providing to Thunderbird has to be better than nothing, which is what they would be getting from them if they went their own way. Unless the foundation is hindering development in someway, I really don't see the point of spinning off.
Someone with no technical knowledge cannot run a technically oriented company. The Mozilla Foundation needs someone competent. Winifred cannot be the leader of something she doesn't understand. That's Winifred Mitchell Baker, the CEO of Mozilla, an extremely socially uncomfortable lawyer who became CEO when no one thought there was an opportunity. Now that Mozilla Foundation is making millions from making Google the default browser, Winifred can afford to hire people to make herself look good.
There are many, many quirks in Firefox, not just Thunderbird, that should be fixed, but no technically oriented manager to organize that. For example, the CPU hogging bug has been there for at least 5 years. Winifred has insufficient control over those who work for her, because she doesn't understand what they do. The Firefox CPU hogging and memory gobbling bug would take some serious troubleshooting to find, and no one wants to do the work, apparently. See Firefox development sometimes resembles playing.
Don't let ignorant and managers destroy your programming efforts. Find some way to have them removed.
Thunderbird has solid code, but the UI is totally unpolished. For example, the folder list (i.e. group list for Usenet) cannot be sorted alphabetically. It's the most basic interface expectation you can have, but Thunderbird doesn't do it. The groups are just listed in whatever order you happen to add them. It's extremely difficult to set preferences for how threads and messages are displayed. There are tons of these little annoyances in the UI -- especially since most of the defaults are horrible -- because the devs are apparently too focused on obscure features that they don't realize how unusable Thunderbird is compared to Outlook. It's frustrating because the fixes that Thunderbird needs are *easy*, there's just nobody doing them.
And while Thunderbird can import email from Outlook, it can't import basic Newsgroup settings, like which groups you're subscribed to. Good luck manually re-adding 50+ groups.
Not too long ago, Qualcomm, the publisher of the Eudora E-mail client, announced that future Eudora versions would be based on Thunderbird. Back in the bad old days when I still had to use Windows, I used Eudora for E-mail -- it was streets ahead of MS Outhouse. Perhaps Mozilla can cook up a deal with Qualcomm.
If you have a problems about how she is doing in that role, then say so, but otherwise you are complaining about the wrong person.
Already Thunderbird is not that great a product, especially when compared to Firefox. I don't know whats gonna happen now - Hope it will not become just another open source project with just handful of folks using it:(
Of course they did.
The two lead engineers have been working paid full-time on this for years, where do you think those resources are coming from? The mozilla build team has pushed releases, Thunderbird has had its place on mozilla.com along side Firefox etc.
Basically, the issue now is - how is Thunderbird going to survive without all this support? I'm not saying it all is going away, but Thunderbird WILL have to do more on its own. As I understand it, Mozilla Foundation/Corporation (not sure which) might still help out somewhat financially, but I am not sure of the status on that situation.
However, I think there's no reason to believe "it's all over". There are plenty of other organizations/companies doing top-notch Mozilla work without being a physical part of Mozilla Corporation. See Joost, Songbird, and others. Also, it will be interesting to see what high-level decisions are taken by the Thunderbird team now that they will be more independent. I think there's a chance they will have to think more radically about Thunderbird's place in the world than what has been the case up until now.
-Håkan
kdawson is still a fucking fucktard shithead cunt.
i'm in control here bitches!
Why not split off Firefox instead, since it's getting most of the attention? Maybe then the Mozilla project can go back to making good software.
Geez, I just got the new Tbird installed with all the extensions I need, syncing up to 6 different email accounts and also allowing me to see/edit my google calendar and seeing the RSS feed on my blog. Did I pick the wrong client? As of this moment, I don't think so, but time will tell.
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
"Stop fawning over Firefox so much and develop the projects more equally" isn't even mentioned.
It's just a case of glory seekers. From the Mozillazine forums/Bugzilla, it appears MScott is pretty much the only truly dedicated developer of Thunderbird. It's not as "sexy" as Firefox, so people want to contribute to the browser instead. Firefox has brand recognition to almost make it a household name like IE is now. Thunderbird, not nearly so much.
Does anyone know why all of these products are based around animals,
particularly scary animals at that?
Mozilla sounds like something that would chase me out of a Japanese movie
theater, Thunderbird is not only a car and malt liquor beverage, but
also seemingly a monster's name.
Duck, Here comes Brontosaurus 1.2!
The ability to automatically print extensions . . . that's right there in outlook, but isn't in the Thunderbird print dialog.
hawk
For personal use I can't remember the last time I used a email client for personal use. Probably Freshman year in college. Once my school came up with a Web client I used it less and less frequently. My old job was a small company so we did use POP3 internally, but even they were migrating to others. My current job uses Outlook, and for personal email I use Yahoo and Gmail. I know Thunderbird has other things like RSS feeds etc, but again I set up Gmail for that too.
Firefox is cool, and exciting - and it generates millions of dollars in kickbacks from Google from the default search bar. Thunderbid enjoys no such advantage. What's more, there are several good alternatives to Thunderbird, and a smaller development community. I can't help thinking this mainly comes down to politics within Mozilla, despite things such as this quote, from one of Baker's comments to her own article:
Sure, there is a smaller community. But I put it to you that that is because e-mail is a mature application. E-mail clients are all much alike, and most of their functionality is pretty much giving you the properties of e-mail as described in the RFC's. But it doesn't have to be that way!
Nowadays a majority of people use webmail rather than a standard mail client. Obviously webmail is perfect for when roaming about, but surely a local client can have enough useful functionality to entice people to use it on their usual own machine. With tight integration with popular webmail services, lots of improved searching and display functionality, new ideas for spam-prevention and better extensions, Thunderbird could be a proud member of the Mozilla stable of programs. Thunderbird: reclaim your e-mail.
Instead, it's going to be passed about, lose Mozilla's powerful support, and become just another e-mail program. Maybe Evolution will become the mail-client of the future instead.
#define struct union
Anyone besides me wish that you could run Thunderbird in a tab inside Firefox, ala FireFTP? If the interface was Gmail-esque and ran in a tab, with a shared Sunbird calendar in another tab, that would be the killer arrangement for me. If those apps all came bundled in server side application suite along with a portal and company wiki so you could either setup and manage it internally or hire out hosted services, that might be very appealing in the business world.
My sense is we're on the verge of moving away from client-centric software to a hosted application model. There is some functionality still a ways off but email, calendar and web browsing are certainly there now. Google apps is showing the potential for hosted productivity apps, SugarCRM...the big pieces are already there. There just isn't any unifying force...the Standard Oil of OSS. Oddly the application community seems to be moving apart instead of coming together, but it's always been a contentious environment.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I used (and was very faithful to) Thunderbird for a long time (well, ~ 4 years). Loved the extensions, and the skinning capability. However, it started corrupting its files, so that old emails were lost, it couldn't start correctly, etc. I've since switched to KMail, have much better filtering capabilities, and better addressbook support. It's not nearly so pretty as Thunderbird, but a helluva lot more stable.
Qualcomm awhile back has stated Eudora was going to be founded on Thunderbird, wonder what this news now means to them. I really think that the Mozilla Foundation should continue to develop Thunderbird, Firefox maybe the Ace, but surely Thunderbird is a Jack or Queen. We really need these apps to compete with Microsoft's. I'd rather see them scrap Camino than Thunderbird, just make the Mac people use FF without the consistant UI, I never saw what the big deal was, although I think it allows them to do spelling checks and other things the standard Mac UI does.
If anyone is surprised by this move, they weren't paying attention.
MoFo/MoCo are owned in a serious financial way by Google. Remember the Mozilla Suite was dumped in a similar, though worse, manner just a few years ago when Google poored money all over the cash strapped Mozilla that AOL left behind. Google wasn't interested in financing the suite. Google probably stipulates that their financing only go to Firefox development, where Google is front and center in the users face. Google isn't likely to help finance a mail client where they don't see any return on investment. Google wants you to use Gmail for the ads.
The funds Mozilla had before the Google deal were likely diverted from the suite to Thunderbird and other applications. Mozilla has likely exhausted those funds now. Thunderbird developers should join the SeaMonkey community. Together the community and the projects might survive this.
Future prediction of a friend: When the government cracks down on MoFo's shady tax history, MoFo will go under and Google will likely buy MoCo and spin it as if they saved Mozilla.
http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html
Just like closed-source, for-profit orgs. OSS is really growing up! :-)
I fully support Mozilla and hope they are able to make it an industry standard program, but I am waiting until they get everything figured out before I switch all of my users over to it. Feel free to bash me and say it's able to do everything you need it to do, but it doesn't work well with emails sent from Outlook or Outlook Express and I know this from hearing people bitch every day and night and seeing it myself.
Anyway, I hope this move help them and doesn't hurt the program if they decide to scrap it altogether.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
While Thunderbird is a great product (use pine myself), Mozilla are failing to rise to the challenge. Resigning themselves to one success story and passing the buck isn't a long term strategy. I've installed Thunderbird on many customers desktops because when it fits the bill, it is IMHO the best client.
Perhaps Mozilla need a business orientated product manager to take Thunderbird out into the world. In ditching XULRunner and now looking to rid themselves of TB, they're left fighting a losing battle. Imagine how fast competitors would encroach on Microsoft if they ditched everything apart from Windows and Office?
Something is very wrong here.
Thunderbird has to compete with not only client-side apps like Outlook and Eudora, but also webmail packages, which are becoming very sophisticated thanks to AJAX. Years ago, webmail sucked - limited space, no search ability, etc. But now it is really good, and I'm finding I envy my colleagues who don't need Remote Desktop to check their email. I even wonder if POP3's future is looking grim.
Thunderbird needs a deal with Google (Firefox default home) so the millions in kickbacks will roll in.
I guarantee the Firefox group will love 'em again and help them spend the money!
Sorry to be so blunt, but you did ask to be told. :-)
There aren't any particular limits on IMAP, and it's not really designed to "sync" mail. It's a way for mail (however many folders, subfolders, or whatever) to live on a central server, while your client downloads a list of them and then asks to see whichever one you click on.
Most clients also have an offline mode, where it copies everything locally, but there is exactly one master mail store. And you can change clients 10 times in a day with no grief.
Why can't Thunderbird become just another plugin for Firefox?
This would get a lot more users and probably a lot more people using it and improving it.
It would make Firefox a little "fatter", but overall would improve both products
just a thought
The pieces are JUST starting to come together re: replacing MS Exchange... although, granted, it's still VERY alpha/beta it's quite an exciting development.
/w Lightning talks to it. There are other Thunderbird plugins which use GroupDAV for shared address lists and free/busy information through the OpenGroupware server.
OpenGroupware (nightly builds) support CalDAV, and Thunderbird
This works today(!), though it's non-trivial to set up, and you have to be careful about versions. The combination to use is Lightning 0.3.1, the latest Thunderbird, OpenGroupware nightly, and the latest GroupDAV free/busy and shared address lists plugins. Unfortunately the latest Sunbird/Lightning (0.5) doesn't work right now, but bugs have been filed and the developers understand the problem... and a fix will happen in time.
OK, it's less functional and robust compared to the dominant player... but it's cheaper.
That is all...
I hope they make Thunderbird have features like Outlook has, but without the security flaws.
The Calendar extension needs more work, and so does the Address book. I need to be able to get the Address book to export to Outlook CSVs so that I can import them into my Yahoo address book, or my Timex Datalink Watch or iPaq because the Thunderbird CSV files don't work with those applications.
Having data syncing with the calendar and address book with mobile devices, PDAs, watches, etc would be a good thing as well.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
- They are becoming beholden to Google and a single project (Firefox). We don't need another Opera (nothing wrong with Opera per se), or another browser created by yet another software company. OSS is supposed to be a *different* business model, with a *broader* vision, benefitting the public, not just Google proxies or lackies.
-It would seem that they endanger their status as a 501c3 public charity/foundation, and thus their tax-exempt status. IIRC, a 501c3 cannot accept more than 10% of their funding from any one source. At the moment Mozilla is rapidly looking like they are doing coding for hire (Firefox for Google).
- Pushing Thunderbird forward *within* Mozilla would at least maintain some sense that 1) they are promulgating a broader mission, 2) they are doing more than what Google asks them to.
- If Google's funding is truly earmarked for Firefox (as suggested in this thread), Mozilla should end that right now, and stipulate to Google that at least some reasonable fraction of their "donation" (e.g. 30%) MUST be in the form of an "unrestricted grant", that could and will be use for other projects in the foundation, like Thunderbird.
Mozilla is nuts for focusing on Firefox at the expense of Thunderbird. They are losing sight of their entire unique contribution to the community, and their larger mission.
Email is an essential function of the Internet and modern computing. If Thunderbird isn't doing so well, Mozilla should be fixing the problem and addressing those issues head-on, rather than jettisoning and punting on it.
She's in charge of the organization. Anything that it produces reflects on her. Her job does include all the donations and budgeting and whatever you described, but it certainly also includes making sure the product is decent. If she can't do it herself, it's up to her to find somebody who is capable of managing the development team to produce a decent product. The parent's saying she's not capable of that.
Thanks for telling me I'm wrong, but you see, both at work (Thunderbird on Debian) and at home (Mail/.mac), my IMAP servers have storage limits too low for my needs. So if I get it right, IMAP can't help me. Thanks anyway! :-)
Animoog.org
Huh. Well, run your own! It's not too bad to set up.
This is a good thing - if Thunderbird get away from the Mozilla Foundation and their ownership of the trademark (and the usage rules that come with it), Debian won't have to make a silly-named fork like CloudPterydactyl.
I'm not into the KDE thing, sorry. People send me non-text data, and I've just gotten used to the whole GUI thing lately. That leaves me with what?
I see several GNOME-friendly alternatives. All of them are horribly buggy. Evolution has had a whopper (your inbox corrupted) for over 5 years last I checked. All of them are half-done, except maybe Evolution which is just shockingly buggy and slow. (Evolution was written by retarded monkeys who smoke crack -- but at least it reports the weather! Wait, REPORTS THE WEATHER???)
Add to that the standard problems that hit Thunderbird and gmail as well: unable to fully interact with the Debian bug reporting system because custom headers are not allowed, and unable to post an unmangled patch to the linux-kernel mailing list.
E-mail is Dead!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
We are killing Thunderbird and replacing it with penelope. Yes, we lied.
To hope that KDE developers do get the IMAP problems with Kmail sorted out and go back to Kontact and Kmail. I came back to T-bird for those issues. The spam filtering works nicely too. Kmail was too slow with IMAP and Spamassasin on my desktop and Spamassasin on the server.
check his post history -- he's got a vendetta going and an axe to grind with this woman; not to mention he's got a persecution complex going because his pet bugs aren't fixed, or if they are fixed, they aren't fixed and followed up with a huge "OH THANK YOU, OH GREAT USER, FOR HELPING US FIND AND FIX THIS BUG, XXOO"
Guess what: this world isn't all about you, pussy. Get over it. You're probably the byproduct of a set of helicopter parents.
Don't like firefox? Find it to be too buggy? Use something else. I'm sure Microsoft will fall all over themselves to fix your reported bugs and tell you what a great tester you are and dote about how insightful and detailed your bug reports are.
If I could self-fellate, I'd never leave the house!
Doesn't it seem like Mozilla goes through these cycles, where they add the kitchen sink, then they realize "Oh no, we're this bloated piece of crap" and so they divest themselves and try to go "back to basics", only to begin the cycle all over again?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I realize that it's the third millennium, when No Software Project Is Ever Finished, but seriously, why not just stick a fork in Thunderbird and call it done? Is there a need to continue adding new features, rather than just focusing on security-related bugfixes? I realize that part of the motivation is to keep Thunderbird able to share code with the active Firefox project, but what is Firefox 3 going to provide that Thunderbird really needs and doesn't already have?
Now that Google is heavily investing money and man-hours into the Firefox web-browser, is it a coincidence that Thunderbird is being kicked out of the Mozilla organization? Thunderbird competes squarely with Google's flagship email product Gmail. I'm not one to start conspiracy theories, but it does seem a bit curious.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
That's funny, because I'm quite happy with Thunderbird, whereas this week I finally switched from FF to Opera, I delayed the transition as much as I could, but FF general slowness and several times using 100% CPU was too much to bear.
Perhaps Mozilla Corporation should be renamed to Firefox Corporation if it wishes to focus solely on Firefox.
OK, it's less functional and robust compared to the dominant player
Unfortunately, that will kill it dead in the corporate space. Cheaper isn't cheaper if you lose money because the server keeps going down (or whatever).
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loathe Outlook and regularly curse the fact that I'm required to use it at work, and would dearly love there to be a viable replacement. As such, I'm quietly rooting for any such project.
But make no mistake, "cheaper but less functional and robust" (than Outlook!) isn't going to cut it. Given time I'm sure it'll get there, but if that's an accurate picture, then it's not there yet, unfortunately.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
One key reason that OSS has a hard time penetrating the commercial world is that there is typically no guarantee that the product will always be around, and kept updated. If thunderbird dies (likely) it will be a MAJOR blow to open source adoption. The idea that OSS software dies "when the developers get bored of it" will be reinforced, and rightfully so. You can't build a business around software that could lose support at any time.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
With all the money they make with the browser I don't get how they are not able to support a Thunderbird.
It is very strange that they want to focus only on one piece of software.
The difference is that, with a community driven project, the creeping featuritis is kept under control.
Best Slashdot Co
How can Mozilla Foundation take the position that it has no responsibility for add-ons when it recommends them?
and caused me to lose 4 months of e-mail. I just formattted last week and thought I was clever by having my docs and program files on another hard drive. Made backing up a snap. The only thing on my c: worth saving was the mozilla profile directory with my bookmarks and mail. Oh..guess what? Mail is no longer in the mozilla subdirectory (yet was in March the last time I backed that directory up and restored from it). Something like this should have been announced with a TV and radio campaign, or at least some bright red flashing shit that pops up the first 10 times after you upgrade it.
With the exception of running on the hardware that I choose even if it is not the hardware that Steve Jobs feels I should choose and without paying a dime to a company I have no interest in supporting (Apple).
Couple of deal-breakers right there.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
"... she's not doing her job and she should be replaced by someone who will do what's necessary at that level."
Exactly. Winifred has had many years and has definitely not created an organized team. See Firefox development sometimes resembles playing, and the links there.
How could someone with no technical knowledge and little social ability help create team feeling and a feeling of responsibility in highly technical projects? Do managers need to understand what they are managing? Yes, of course.
Her name is Winifred Mitchell Baker.
I have spent many many hours reporting bugs. As lots of people have said, if the bugs are especially difficult to fix, the Mozilla team becomes abusive. Read the links.
Often people write Slashdot comments without bothering to understand the discussion or bothering to read the information provided. You certainly didn't.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loathe Outlook and regularly curse the fact that I'm required to use it at work, and would dearly love there to be a viable replacement. As such, I'm quietly rooting for any such project.
Pardon me sir, but my OSS fanboy alert just went off. What exactly is so bad about Outlook? It has its quirks and missing features, but I would really like to know why "regularly curse the fact that I'm required to use it at work." ?
You are quite abusive for someone who is accusing someone else of being abusive.
Also, you didn't bother to read the links provided, which lead to other links, which lead to several bug reports by myself and others.
The grandparent comment is NOT saying that a man with no technical knowledge can manage a technical effort, but a woman can't. There is nothing sexist about saying both sexes need to understand what they manage.
Quote: "100 memory leak bugs have been fixed in the past year..."
And more in the past and probably more to come in the future. Lot's of crashes have been fixed, too. Maybe that is evidence of management problems, that there are so many flaws. Especially since the CPU hogging bug and memory hogging bug is still there.
It is true, I am intending to show disrespect for her work, not for her as a person. I consider the idea that someone with no technical knowledge cannot manage an effort he or she does not understand very obvious, and not controversial.
There are many, many links to Slashdot comments in which people say they have not been treated with respect when they tried to report bugs. Also see my list of 20 excuses that Mozilla developers give for not fixing bugs.
Think Firefox has been stable? Here is an authoritative list that says Firefox has NOT been stable: Crashes with evidence of memory corruption: Critical.
There seems to be a pattern of coding sloppily and then going back and fixing the sloppiness. Maybe you have another idea, but that is how it appears to me.
You say, "I honestly don't understand what the issue is..."
That's true.
The pieces are JUST starting to come together re: replacing MS Exchange...
Right... I'm trying to do the same thing with Kolab for my clients.
I do think that this move could ruin everything for us (the good guys). With one software suite on the desktop, you can replace IE and Lookout, making the desktop safer and eliminating the need for Exchange. I will be quite saddened if the Thunderbird team messes up what they've worked toward for so long on our behalf. Branding, trust, corporate acceptance... all of this can go away in an instant.
Hey, I'm still not happy with the discontinuation of the Mozilla suite. Sure, Seamonkey is a drop-in replacement, but not without cost (see above).
In my opinion, they need to get their internal problems worked out instead of implementing some kind of organizational fork. One of the options was to form a completely separate company, which implies that new developers and other resources would have to be found. What's wrong with keeping the org chart basically the way it is, along with procuring these extra resources, which would hopefully alleviate the issues at hand? Deal with the actual problem instead of potentially ruining everything with a fork.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
The basic issue is whether someone with no technical knowledge can manage a technical project competently I say no.
It also appears to me that Mozilla Foundation suffers from management that lacks insight.