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Mozilla Opens Thunderbird Email Subsidiary
alphadogg is one of several readers to note the opening of the Mozilla Foundation's new subsidiary, Mozilla Messaging, charged with developing the free, open source Thunderbird email software. Mozilla Messaging will initially focus on Thunderbird 3, which aims at improving several aspects of the software, including integrated calendaring and better search. ZDNet UK's coverage leads with the interest the new organization has in developing instant-messaging software.
The CEO of this new Mozilla Messaging company writes the most insightful blog post containing the most hopeful look at the future of messaging and how Thunderbird could make a difference there... and slashdot links to mostly useless informationweek and zdnet stories?? Bleh...
David Ascher really gives me hope for where things are going - but he can't do it alone. And he can't get the people who'd help to do so if he's being ignored!
That's a nice thought, but if I had a dime for every time someone said a particular piece of technology would be the death of Microsoft, I could buy Microsoft and kill it myself.
Personally, what I'd like to see is an e-mail client that comes by default with working encryption... that is to say, it tells other e-mail clients what encryption choices it offers and learns from messages it receives and always chooses the best encryption option when sending messages to others. Further, I'd like that choice to handle when I send a message to a CC list of 30 people, such that it will send messages to all users, some encrypted and some not, but still letting all users get the full CC list for responses. Ideally I'd like to see this built upon an open standard that has buy in not only from the Thunderbird team, but also other major vendors (IBM, Sun, Apple, etc.) as well as other types of software (IM, VoIP, video conferencing, etc.)
Seriously, in this day and age doesn't ist seem idiotic that easy to use encryption is not a built in feature for most e-mail clients? I know why Google hasn't done this (they have a conflict of interest) but what have e-mail software vendors been doing for the last 5 years? How is it possible that someone like Apple hasn't jumped on this and made a snarky advert where the "Mac guy" says, "Oh really, I put my mail in envelopes so random strangers and people at the post office can't read the letters I send to my bank and girlfriend."
Lightning supports both WebDAV and CalDAV, which allow calendar sharing. It plays with google calendar & Apple's iCal. It just doesn't play with Outlook/Exchange.
Evolution works with exchange, as does MS's Outlook Web Access.
I am Oracle's calendar, you insensitive clod! See if I ever give you a date again.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I agree that calendars are necessary for corporate deployment. But while you mentioned other stand-alone clients, where are they? I need something that doesn't suck security-wise (*cough* Outlook Express), is supported on multiple platforms (sorry KMail), isn't packaged with a bunch of other stuff I don't need (no thanks, Seamonkey), is full-featured and graphical (I love you pine and mutt, but most users won't deal with a CLI), and doesn't have annoying interface bugs (Thunderbird, you are really on the edge here). First and foremost, I want a program that does email perfectly. A stand-alone client like that currently does not exist. (And don't tell me to go to webmail, I'm not going to put up with waiting several seconds between each email, and I need to be able to read my old mail and compose new mail on an airplane.)
Corporate users should have a "corporate plugin" with all the calendaring and shared address book stuff in there. Have it as an option during install, sure, but if I'm a home user I don't want the clutter of Outlook and I certainly don't want the bloat.