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Thunderbird in Crisis?
Elektroschock writes "The two core developers of Thunderbird have left Mozilla. Scott McGregor made a brief statement: 'I wanted to let the Thunderbird community know that Friday October 12th will be my last day as an employee of the Mozilla Corporation.' Meanwhile, David Bienvenu blogged: 'Just wanted to let everyone know that my last day at The Mozilla Corporation will be Oct. 12. I intend to stay involved with Thunderbird... I've enjoyed working at Mozilla a lot, and I wish Mozilla Co and the new Mail Co all the best.' A few month ago Mozilla management considered abandoning their second product and setting up a special corporation just for the mail client. Scott was more or less supportive. David joined in. While Sunbird just released a new version no appropriate resources were dedicated to the missing component. And while Thunderbird became the most used Linux mail client it has been abandoned by Mozilla for 'popularity reasons'. Both messages from David and Scott do not sound as if the founders will play any role in the Thunderbird Mail Corporation. What happened to Mozilla? Is it a case of pauperization through donations?"
I will continue to use it even if it never changes again. I like it. Maybe it's just *that* stable?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I'm in the midst of attempting a conversion from my PC-based mail client (Eudora) to Thunderbird on a Mac. It's been a horror show from day one - the Thunderbird import function turns out to be more buggy than a
New York City apartment in the summer. If I didn't have lots of GNU command-line tools and a hex editor to fix the many things that choke Tbird, I'd have abandoned the effort and switched to some proprietary client a long time ago.
Let's hope as a separate entity they can do better.
The source code is out there. If it serves a useful purpose, someone will either take it and continue or fork it.
If not, then someone will eventually come out with something better.
I use thunderbird quite a bit but I wonder if heavy email clients have much future. Of all the applications where a web client can replace a heavy desktop side client email seems like one of the easiest and google has proven that you can make a webmail client that isn't painful to use.
And it'd be sad if it disappeared, but Apple Mail, Evolution and Gmail are better options on non-Windows platforms. That's probably why it's not as popular as it should be.
(also, if you're careful enough, Outlook and Outlook Express are perfectly usable on Windows, especially the newer versions)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
I'm stuck using Exchange. :-(
I use evolution on Linux.
I hate the exchange web stuff. I use g-mail for person stuff.
Thunderbird is not something I've ever used and I'm not going to miss it.
...When even International Rescue are in crisis!
Oh wait, what...?
mozilla has eudora as well
i suspect this is having an unspoken impact on things in the mozilla camp
back in the day we didnt have no old school
It seems Mozilla is looking more and more like a normal corporation, and less like a Open Source supporter. This is funny, since Mozilla is what it is because of the Open Source community support.
And here is our retribution!
Well, i just guess he meant that :)
But Mozilla is still far from it.
Anyone can abandon a project, even a corporation.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I hate webmail, too. While I have to maintain a lot of email addresses, whenever possible I access my webmail accounts through Thunderbird, anyway. That way at least I have a consistent interface.
Most "open source" organizations are not corporations at all, but simply collaborations among individuals. Some large-scale open-source projects have gone (or rarely, started) commercial, but not most, by any means.
"Scott McGregor made a brief statement: 'I wanted to let the Thunderbird community know that Mozilla Corporation is not in charge of Gundam.'"
MOD PARENT UP. Very Interesting: "Outlook Express' issues have tarnished the fact that Outlook proper is actually a very good, secure, and competent email client."
I would say that due to the fact that we're approaching the end of 2007 and Thunderbird still doesn't have integrated calendaring (not in beta, that's a copout), then yes, Thunderbird is in crisis.
Until feature-for-feature Thunderbird can equal or beat Outlook it will never have people flocking to it like Firefox did.
Look at Firefox versus IE 6 - heck, Firefox basically "inspired" IE 7 (tabs, search bar on the top right, extensions, etc. etc.) That's what led to the huge masses adopting it.
The fact that Zimbra has released a cross-platform offline client instead of extending Thunderbird to fit their needs speaks volumes.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/26/zimbra-to-lauch-desktop-application-with-full-offline-functionality/
Here's to the crazy ones
"IMHO MoFo should be reorganized..."
To many people, MoFo means something offensive. Perhaps MozFo would be better.
Two things seem to have affected MozFo: 1) It is headed by someone with no technical experience, Winifred Mitchell Baker. 2) Google has been giving MozFo $50,000,000 per year because Google search is the default search engine.
I would very much like to hear more about what's happening with MozFo.
KMail is a good option too, or Kontact if you want integration with calendars and a newsreader (KNode), or just run them each separately. I use KMail for all my email, I prefer the interface to Thunderbird's.
Dear /.
/. reader
You should be ashamed of yourselves. When you consider the size and diversity of your readership, writing sensationalised headlines based on your own assumption there may be a crisis with a project is very damaging to said project. Didn't your parents ever tell you to think before you open your mouths? With your reach you're in a position of responsibility and frankly, you should STFU until the developers in question have actually given their reasons.
Increasingly disappointed
ADVERTISING! I'm assuming you are like me and are using something like Adblock Plus and wouldn't even know about the existence of internet advertising, but it certainly exists. I prefer my daily life to be as free of advertising as possible. *I* make the educated purchasing decisions and *I* do so based on the best prices, shipping arrangements, warranty, customer feedback, etc. Advertising is an insult to intelligence, a waste of money and completely inefficient and blind method of making purchasing decisions.
The key problem with the much hyped "web based application services" is that there is no *I* left in your usage of computers/the internet.
- *I* should be able to do whatever I want with my email (and have assurance my actions on the email have been carried out permanently)
- *I* should be able to view it and export it any way I wish
- *I* should be able to increase the size of the GUI controls to 3x if I have eyesight difficulties
- *I* should be able to sign/encrypt my email so the email provider can't read it
- *I* should be able to have assurance that my email/data won't be held hostage for a sum when the company chooses to start charging for email
- *I* should be able to see how my emails are handled behind the scenes and what information is stored on me
- *I* should be able to do all of this for FREE and FOREVER on a level playing field without any annoying advertising
Why copy Microsoft's idiot design with all of it's terrible maintainance and security problems? Separation gives you:
One of the main strengths of free software is that we can all work together. The reason Microsoft does feature bundling is that they know you need their mail program so they want to use that to force you to use their calendar solution. Since free software developers don't care (in the same way) and just want the best solution for the user they aren't bound by the stupidities of marketing.
I have used Thunderbird exclusively since v1.5 and I have never looked back! I need those new features.
I need security updates. I need a calendar. We all use Thunderbird. Just fork it damnit! We need it.
call it Inlook or something!
They're using their grammar skills there.
The reason Thunderbird won't gain the same traction as Firefox has is Exchange. The Thunderbird developers have made a great email client, but they've hit the wrong target. They, along with GMail et. al. have killed off Eudora and Pegasus, not Outlook. (aside - here's hoping IncrediMail is next)
Email has evolved into a collaboration tool, not just a way of sending words in ASCII. Plain and simple, until your contacts can email you a meeting request and TBird puts it in your calendar automagically - and that meeting goes in your BlackBerry/Treo/Gizmo-of-the-week - it won't gain near the same buzz. Outlook + Exchange adds far too much business value to simply abandon in the name of Open and Free.
If you just need email, Thunderbird is OK-fine - if you need collaboration, you need Outlook. It's a damn shame, too.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
All I see is some useless drama. Developers quit all the time. And structures change. That's life, not a crisis.
Instead of them being inline as they are in Kmail, OE and Outlook, Evolution attaches them as a seperate file. This defeats the entire purpose of digitally signing an email. It's impossible to prove the email was modified or who it was signed by as the attachment could go to anything. Sorry but until Evolution gets that straight (inline means INLINE) it will remain a bit player on Linux.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
After over a year of using Thunderbird (Icedove), I've gone back to using Mutt. ;)
.... are all so much easier with Mutt. But, I'll say this for Thunderbird, it is slick.
The main reason is that, for me, email is mostly text (at least the email I want), I do tons of email over a ssh connection, and, even with an ADSL connection (but not the biggest pipe in the world), X11 forwarding over ssh made using Thunderbird over ssh slow and cumbersome. In addition, filtering, scripts, backup, attachments, editing (with my editor of choice)
Luckily, I don't do calendaring.
Best wishes,
Bob
As far as I am aware, there hasn't been a single negative comment from these developers upon their departure. Do you think there might be a slim possibility that they received job offers that interested them more than Thunderbird?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I cannot believe that Thunderbird has a bus effect threshhold of only two developers. In any case, the Penelope developers will be able to take over, I'm sure, but it makes open source software seem rather fragile. Not that I feel that closed source software is any more stable. In any case, Tbird saves mail as mbox, so there should be absolutely no problem moving to Kmail, Evolution, or some other standardized client.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Just because it's in a separate file it doesn't mean that the signature is meaningless. The signature doesn't simply say "yeah, whatever's the first part of this email is fine", you know. Do you really believe that detached signatures were a) invented, b) standardised, and c) implemented in multiple mail clients without anybody realising that the signatures need to correspond to the data they are signing?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
with the same company? Seems a bit suspicious they both leave on the same day without saying what they are going to be doing. I suspect they have been head hunted.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
2) When I decide to just quit all windows of my web-browser to clean up my desktop I hate that the mail gets closed too. I like that its a separate application, one that doesn't crash when I visit a website that kills the browser.
Fixed. Try the Firefox extension TabMixPlus, which includes some nifty extra tab context menus and a session manager. Or the Firefox extension Session Manager, should also do fine if you only want that.
Crashes and problems with Firefox will never bother you so much again.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Claws Mail?
It's much faster and powerful than Thunderbird, and it's multiplatform. I was tempted to swap it with Thunderbird some months ago and went back as soon as I discovered how unstable is Thunderbird when managing a dozen or so accounts.
For the normal user Thunderbird is a good email client, but when you need something fast, powerful and stable, I'd strongly suggest to try Claws Mail.
That's the power of Open Source. Should Thunderbird "die", it would be mantained by someone else in a matter of weeks, but in the very unlikely situation it dissolves without the development being taken over by other developers, we already have a great alternative.
There is also Sylpheed. I'm using it for years..
They lost me when they went full GTK2 - which is just ugly and slow on my older machines.
Shouldn't you update your sig to encourage everyone to use Amazon's cross platform, completely DRM free service?
Much better than iTunes - your non-PC-savvy friends will be able to confidently buy any track from Amazon, instead of being confused by the mingling of DRM-encumbered & DRM-free tracks on iTunes (and its cheaper to boot).
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I don't know why this e-mail client doesn't get more attention. I find it similar to Thunderbird but much faster. Also, as far as I remember, included some tools to import from Eudora, which worked very well for me (while Thunderbird didn't).
I remain a bit unconvinced that calendaring should be built into a mail client as standard, but that's exactly why there's extensions available for Thunderbird for the (I suspect minority) who need such a calendaring feature. I'll point you to the Lightning download page: a calendar Thunderbird extension (based on Sunbird) no less. Yes, it's numbered 0.5 at the moment (and there's a 0.7RC1 which you can try if you need newer features), but it's been developed for more than 18 months now and is fairly usable.
The Mozilla Corporation has become something steeped more in PR and spin than actual technical innovation. We are partly to blame - we allowed ourselves to get caught up in it while a faceless organization silently emerged, focused on shipping more and more units of today's flavor... while beating the drum: there must be only one flavor of innovation... doesn't matter what it is as long as we are in control of the ideology and the message... keeps things simple for the marketdroids and the consumers. Actually maintaining choice and innovation on the internet is hard. Why bother when you can cut corners and say you didn't? Everyone will believe you anyway, so what's the point? That's the way things are done in America today. Why should Open Source be any different? Mozilla is a Public Asset after all. An open, egalitarian society where everyone can make a difference as long as you kiss the right ass and don't ask too many challenging questions of those in charge. Mozilla is a public asset. Just keep saying it over and over.
In this matter, everyone is being too cordial to be believed at face value. Doubtless there's a rich subtext. Such is life.
Yes,
But I believe the issue here is a resource issue. TB is a stable mail client software but it sits within its own world.
What it needs is more integration to third parties. I would suggest:
- compatibility with system address book (e.g. on Mac OS X)
- ability to natively synchronize with mobiles phones in regards with contacts and appointment
- ability to send / receive SMS and MMS from TB
- compatibility with calandar, task back end from major CRM softwares (SugarOS).
I would aso suggest the partnership with an open source calendaring and task management server to propose a complete package. Finally, Exchange compatibilty could be addressed by building an extension based OpenChange http://www.openchange.org/
So again, the same question arises : who will have time, dedidication and money to do all this.
Emmanuel
Their first day at the newly founded Thunderbird Mail Corporation? After all they, Scott and David, would have to leave the Mozilla Corporation, if they play to continue with Thunderbird, because TMC and MC are two *different* corporations....
I'm sure the authors of the PGP/MIME would like to hear the details of the flaws you have uncovered in their RFC.
The advantage of Thunderbird over Evolution is that it runs on all major platforms. Evolution does have a port for Windows, but it's pretty poor. I expect that a lot of companies would be interested in a Thunderbird client (and paying support for it) if it would support the mail server they use.
Perhaps Thunderbird / Sunbird should even move to the OpenOffice project. After all, an Outlook app must be the major the missing component in the OpenOffice suite, and here is one ready for adoption.
It might be over kill, but transfering mail from your local folder to an imap folder, then out again is the safest. You would think they would use the same
internal conversion moethodoly to do it properly, ie export to mail format, then reimport again as if its imap over file IO.
But really, we dont need Tbird, since every linux geek has a linux box and mailserver, why not just keep all mail in your local mail server, and get
a decent gmail lookalike web mail program on the linux box, then view all mail via firefox/whatever!!
Any gmail clones for OSS servers?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
There, is that so hard???
Open two mail accounts, drag/drop between them. tsk tsk, how can you miss such an easy choice.
I used to use this method 7+ years ago.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Thunderbird is the only email package I've got to work on my Linux / Windows machine, which allows me to dual boot and still collect and read email whichever OS I'm in.
It does have an irritating bug of only showing three email accounts in the accounts folder panel, and hiding any other accounts you have, even if you collect email for them (and so you can't read emails to those accounts). Oh, and I don't like it being a Usenet reader as well, it doesn't do it particularly well anyway.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Would be my next Linux choice. http://kontact.kde.org/kmail/
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
If it was easy enough to implement new protocols, it would be exciting to do development. For example, if there were some XPCOM components that I could implement to talk to Exchange, that would be GREAT!
If such a thing does exist, please speak up!
Like it or not, Thunderbird does need to compete with Outlook. I'd be very happy if they'd maintain two builds: a "lite" version that only does mail, and a "groupware" version that integrates well with open source "Exchange killer" software. (I'm partial to Citadel because I'm involved in its development, but any server supporting standard iCalendar and vCard formats delivered over standard protocols will be just fine.)
(And yes, I used the "g" word. Proudly, in fact. Don't bother linking to JWZ's rant about it because he's wrong.).
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
GMail killed Thunderbird. Until we replace the SMTP/IMAP/POP e-mail system with something better, desktop e-mail will continue to be primarily the domain of businesses. Even then, it will mostly be done with Exchange/Outlook and Evolution.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
One area where evolution just bites is on a machine with less than 1GB free RAM per user. It's an incredible RAM pig, especially for large IMAP mailboxes. As someone who hosts a thin client network, I'm not a fan. Thunderbird is a lot better. That said, I'm actually moving users over to kmail at the moment because (a) they prefer it and (b) it's more reliable - no random IMAP attachment download issues, no weird zombie processes hanging around after an unexpected X server death, and a more consistent and responsive UI.
Thunderbird is, however, without a doubt the best and possibly the only cross platform mail client that can do secure IMAP including client certificates. On some platforms the native client (I point particularly to Apple Mail) just don't work with IMAPs/IMAP+TLS and client certs at all. For that alone I hope it sticks around.
Open Letter to the Thunderbird Community
Also note that both Scott and David say they'll still be working on TB. Scott's post:
David's:
Given the timing and very similar wording of their posts, I'm guessing that Ascher's right - they're going off to work on something together.
It does suck; those two know more about TB than anyone, and even when they were full-time employees, TB development was fairly glacial - it's just too big and monolithic for that size development team. But I don't know that this necessarily means the end of TB. I certainly hope not.
Some people don't like having that many applications open at once. Why should I need to have an email client, a news reader, an RSS reader, and a calendar open at once? Why can't I just have that all in one application?
Of course, don't let the fact that the overwhelming majority of the business world finds combining email with a calendar to be useful change your mind.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Like http://www.openchange.org/ ?
Order the CD now while you still can!
mbox sucks donkey dick; maildir all the way.
They've come to a dead end. What else can they do? pop4, a cross-breed of imap and pop3, is stalled.
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
My newest machine is about 7 years old; I'm in a pinch that thousands of hours of intense concentration can show no way out. I play UT, surf, do all the things everyone else does, I even have an icon that'll bring up random episodes of Firefly, since there's plenty of power for media.
But I load OpenOffice and the world stops.
I fear that Thunderbird, under the direction of OO will become bloated and laggy as well! I had a friend who didn't know any better; her P2/300 was on loan to show her how to use Linux. She waited over 2H for it to load. It was insane. These guys really need to profile their code.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
You said that webmail interfaces will never replace a "good mail client", but, unfortunately, Thunderbird doesn't do the one thing that it could do to serve as a "good mail client" for millions of people out there, and that is to work with MS Exchange. Why they didn't see fit to make that a priority is beyond me... I have tried to use Thunderbird at work, but they gave me no choice but to abandon it 20 minutes later and switch back to Outlook (which I hate).
POP mail is easily handled by Gmail, which attracts a lot of the same market. You mention a lot of what you perceive to be "advantages" of a mail client, but, in reality, most people don't care about those things.
I originally tried to switch to Thunderbird from Outlook a couple years back. Same problem... nothing imported properly, messages and contacts all over the place in bits and pieces, etc. Multiple bugs have already been reported but never solved.
The comments are that certain architectures are hard to read and import from. My comment to that is, well, if you plan on Thunderbird being any kind of success working import is the first step, so either fix it or die.
Thunderbird was a great idea, but for those with better working IMAP options (Outlook Express for example) it leaves a great deal to be desired. I think the primary audience is Linux/Unix folks.
rt
This is a non-issue. Webmail has nothing to do with Desktop mail, and the application and scenario for it are more or less entirely different. The mail client should be viewed as primarily an archive tool, with the online app as a remote access tool.
As for types of Webmail, I'm fine with something as basic as Squirelmail, though I really do like some rich projects like RoundCube (www.roundcube.net)
don't use Thunderbird simply because it doesn't have a Received Date option? I'm not kidding you. Every person I've EVER talked to about Thunderbird and why they don't use it brought this up. Its all these stupid little issues that they just ignore that got them where they are today.
I'm not worried: I'm more of an olde english drinker.
echo $SIGNATURE
Being able to integrate with exchange would be MARVELOUS - if it were open. And by that i dont mean that Exchange should be open, but the communication with it. Take a look at things like:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openchange/
There have been MANY projects to try and pull apart that communications channel into a library that could be implemented anywhere and no one has managed it (yet). The original work (above) was about trying to make an exchange (server) replacement, but now its extending into implementing client connectivity. Hell, evolution only manages to do it by going thru the OWA (which is a hack at best). So everyone sitting there going "oh it should have exchange connectivity" paleeease write to MS and tell them they should open the protocols (personally, i think they should be forced to do this).. It would be fair to say that it would be nice if it had a real calendar/colab tool for the corporate environment, but if your using this at home you really REALLY need to get a more spontaneous life, seriously!.
So that you can check your email while killing mercenaries and alien scum.
As I said, there may have been other steps in this process that I've forgotten.
My point isn't that these solutions, in my case, were that hard. But figuring out what was wrong, and implementing them, took huge amounts of time and patience. An ordinary user would never have these means (knowledge of command-line Unix utilities, and insight into what might be failing) at his/her disposal. And they surely wouldn't have gone to these lengths to diagnose and correct the problems. (Although, to be honest, an ordinary user wouldn't have 10-15 years of email saved up that they wanted to convert to a new platform).
And - more importantly, and some of the reason for this rant - I think that import/conversion function, especially in FOSS software, have a greater need to be as friendly and bulletproof as possible, because the user's still quite possibly in the "I'm going to try it out and see if I want to use it instead of my old [proprietary] application if it doesn't work'. But in Tbird, seemingly, Import's it's at most an afterthought, and extremely fragile even AFTER you've used third-party apps like Eudora Rescue or Eudora Mailbox Cleaner to try and get around the known issues, limitations, and deficiencies in the code. That isn't the way it should be in an app that's trying to compete for mind and market share with some pretty damn good commercial or closed-source apps.
As someone who is now collecting a fairly significant backlog of mail archives, I gotta ask: Is it worth it? How often do you actually need access to those archives and do they provide the resource you think they should? I know storage is cheap and I've got plenty of it, so I don't think I'll *stop* archiving, but sometimes I wonder. I've had to access them once in about 3 years. I was able to zgrep a big zip archive of emails to find a reference I needed, but it wasn't something I could live without. Convenient? yes. worth the time and effort to maintain those archives? probably not.
Part of my motivation for asking is because I've changed the way I file my paper files and suspect that I could treat my email the same way. I now file all my stuff, unsorted, in a box. The typical office depot collapsible box will hold about 3 months worth of records. 99% of the time, if I need something out of the "files" its in the current box in reverse chronological order and relatively easy to find. Boxes go in storage with the date range on them and after a few years, just get thrown out. I waste 0 time filing and since in reality almost never need access to the back files, there's no real penalty in the retrieval time either.
meh. must be a slow day.
man, I feel like mold.
...except for all the rest.
* does not handle large mailboxes well
* if it can't connect to a mail server, it throws away everything it knows about mail in that account
* after years, they still haven't made the minor modifications to fix encryption
** "encrypt when possible"
** trying to save drafts signed
* it does not keep track of what's happening in imap folders very well
* it does not handle text replies to html messages well (e.g. any email addresses get duplicated as mailto tags)
Someday I may even be able to find the time to fix some of these, but for now, well, it's still better than anything else...
Mozilla makes a fortune from Firefox thanks to their Google deal, so Firefox is self-funding where-as Thunderbird has no potential revenue stream so is just seen as a drain on resources. That's what happens when your corporatise an open source project, the money clouds your vision and detracts from your goals. The tin-foil hat brigade out there might even suggest that Thunderbird, as a competitor to Google, threatens Mozilla's main revenue stream and so may well be paying the price for Googles ongoing support...
The mix format from UW splits the mailbox into multiple files with a filesize limit. This is better for scalability than maildir on may systems & plays nicer with IMAP. Would be nice to see wider adoption of this format!
This is pretty disappointing: two high profile guys leave a large FOSS project, but neglect to blame all their failures on Microsoft.
I, for one, feel very let down.
ModderFokker.
That is to say, a Fokker airplane that for instance slid off the runway
and ended up in the mud (modder).
This is a modderfokker.
bj
IMAP is inherently server-centric. The reason Outlook seems to do what you want is that it treats IMAP as glorified POP & downloads it all anyway. This is not what is intended by the spec! Some consider it a bug, but I guess you see it as a feature. However, you can achieve the same effect more cleanly with programs that are better IMAP clients.
If you want to take IMAP offline, TB has an offline mode, that will download files locally. Or you can use one of the numerous offline IMAP applications.
Gmail doesn't support IMAP, so you solution does not work:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10339
Yeah! Mozilla should stop ignoring Thunderbird. They should create a company whose sole focus is on email and other messaging technology. They should fund the new company with several million dollars so they can get off the ground. Yeah, that's what they should do... then Thunderbird will get the attention it deserves. Oh wait, that's what they're doing already. Nevermind.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
the best way to migrate between mail applications is to use an IMAP account. Configure it on both machines, copy mail in on one and out on the other. Fastmail.fm is a provider of free IMAP that I've used before to do this.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
maildir is not a good option if you want to search your e-mails. You'll get an open/close for each and every e-mail, and when there's tens of thousands of e-mail messages, this takes time and ties up IO on the box.
Too many files, and you'll even thwart normal shell expansions, like grepping for a string in * and getting "Arguments too long".
I much prefer standard mbox format, with external index files. Not only can the files be read by pretty much anything, but searches are also MUCH faster.
Drop your arrogant tone. Your answer doesn't work bonehead.
Gmail doesn't support IMAP:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10339
Remember Chandler? Anyone use it yet? Any thoughts?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
I actually like Gmail's interface and keyboard shortcuts, but the main drawback is speed. It takes "six one-thousands" for me to open my inbox. My computer (iBook 1.42Ghz, 1GB RAM) isn't the fastest, but even on newer machines it still takes a frustratingly long "three one-thousands" to open. Since these delays occur even on fast university networks, my guess is either the server-side is slow or the interface with the browser takes a long time to load. Does anyone know why Gmail is so slow?
Lose 20 pounds, instantly! Just send £20 to... - Bizarro
I like thunderbird, I really do, but it needs much better and more powerful filtering and rule support. There has been no progress in this area for years.
For example - our companies mail boxes are not allowed to go above 1 GB. So, in KMail, I have a rule that says to automatically move messages older than 90 days from my IMAP inbox to my local inbox. This automatically protects me from having my inbox overflow, and I still get to keep all my messages for archival.
Can I do even this simple task in Thunderbird, no. But KMail sucks for other reasons ( HTML composing support is horrible). So, in the end,I have to run BOTH mail clients at the same time, so that I can use thunderbird while KMail filters for me. This is ridiculous.
We need some sort of standard mail format that all mail programs can import/export. It doesn't have to be efficient, just something robust. Probably XML-ish. That would be nice so that it is possible to dump mail from one app into another without significant degredation, and without the authors all writing import filters for every other app.
Why don't upgrade your Thunderbird instead of complaining here... "Order by date received" has been available for a couple of point releases.
Each employee probably costs the company $100K per year in salary, benefits (vacation, insurance), and infrastructure (a place to work, parking, air conditioning, computer equipment). They have about 100 employees. That comes to $10 million per year right there. Then there's the matter of 110 million Firefox users downloading updates about once a month. How much does that much bandwidth cost?
The couldn't possibly have as little as one tenth of that in expenses, even if they tried. Anyway, I've never heard of a company having to justify their revenues.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I know I'm going to get flamed by all the T-bird lovers, so I'll post AC.
Ever since I've tried it when it first came out, T-bird has been defective, and it hasn't changed much since. I tried to recommend it to my customers as a safe alternative to Outlook. They always had problems, however. This is particularly true of the junk mail controls. In the end I have always ended up installing Mozilla Suite, which is an excellent program and what I've always used. Unfortunately, usually by the time I get around to installing Mozilla Suite to correct for T-bird deficiencies the users are usually so fed up with T-bird that they blame Mozilla and won't even use Mozilla Suite or the Firefox browser because of that. Because of the negative reaction of customers to T-bird I won't even attempt to install or recommend T-bird anymore, and have not done so for at least several years.
I've made recommendations to Mozilla to fix the problems with the junk mail controls and get them to work like Mozilla mail. The recommendations have gone unheeded, however, and it seems T-bird hasn't really been significantly updated in years.
Unfortunately to install Seamonkey (Mozilla Suite) Mail you have to install the whole suite, at least in Windows (but fortunately not in Linux!).
You seem to be saying that a manager of a highly technical business does not need to understand the business being managed.
The facts of MozFo indicate otherwise. Development has been glacially slow. Firefox was not even relatively stable in memory use until one version ago, version 2.0.0.6. The CPU hogging bug still exists.
On my windows box at the office I aslo switched to tbird, but I found myself on Gmail more and more. I no longer keep an office at the company and I only use windows for testing win builds of my software. Now all my mail comes through Kmail. I find it easier to use more integrated and just plain better. If I was to do it all over again I'd suggest waiting for the KDE4 for windows versions of KOrganizer. I received complaint after complaint about calendaring, and Sunbird just didn't cut it. I see it has been updated recently but I'm beyond it now.
The blog about Tbird and Mozilla Corp sealed its fate for me.
Good luck to the next group that inherits it. Note to Google. There is screenspace available to serve your adds in the Tbird client. Maybe you should pick it up or fund the Mozilla guys to continue it with a Oficial Gmail extension. Like you guys would use that.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I think they just added this in a nightly build or something actually. See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=29
All your base are belong to Wii.
I had my son vaccinated againt TB. I think a lot of people don't want TB to survive.
The TB released by that MoFo.....
Oh, you meant Thunderbird.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
On the contrary, I'm saying Mitchell is exceptionally well suited to managing MoFo because she's been around the Software world for so long. Speed of development has been "slow" due to Mozilla.org's history. First it was merely a name for part of Netscape, then later the redheaded stepchild of AOL. At the time there were complicated power struggles going on overhead tearing at the limited resources, leading to poor management. When MoFo was founded, you see a marked change in how well it was managed. That's when Firefox really came to the fore, and MoFo turned into the nimble competitor it is today. With Mitchell amongst those at the helm, Mofo has become better and faster, not slower as you intimate. The apparently slower pace of development in the 3.0 process is not due to slow development, but to a huge amount of work being done.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
To work with exchange, it would need to support task lists and appointements well too.
And then you are dealing with a groupware client, not just an email client.
Which is a good idea but hardly trivial.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
PGP MIME attachments are the standard, IIRC PGP Inline is deprecated, though still supported by many clients. For example, in Claws-Mail, one can choose if you want PGP/Inline or PGP/Mime, per message if necessary.
Every four or eight years in the US, the leader of the executive branch leaves and is replaced by someone else. I would hardly call that a crisis. There is nothing in the article to hint that Thunderbird's continued existence is threatened in the least.
What a bad analogy, it disproves your assertion. The executive's departure is well known in advance, his departure is never a surprise. There is never a gap in leadership in the executive branch. The incoming and outgoing executive branches coordinate and work together for months to ensure an orderly transition. Similar things happen in companies, when there is no crisis. Sorry, Thunderbird is experiencing a crisis. Are crisis necessarily fatal? No, but denying that one exists is one way to increase the probability that it will be fatal.
The stupid little issue of not deleting collapsed threads (bug #286194) makes TB unusable for mailing lists and is what stops me using it.
If it can be shown that someone can be successful in a job without having qualifications for that job, then I plan to apply to be a movie star.
You say, 'Speed of development has been "slow" due to Mozilla.org's history.'
Mozilla's history is that, at one time, no one wanted the job of being business manager of Mozilla, because no one thought there was an opportunity. So, a socially uncomfortable lawyer with no technical knowledge took the job.
It seems to me that Mozilla development has been slow because there is no effective top manager.
This option has been available for a long time in Thunderbird, what are you using? Thunderbird 1.0????
Is this how programmers fart then leave the room?
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1