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Mozilla Downshifting Development of Thunderbird E-Mail Client
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla will be announcing next week that they will effectively be taking away resources from Thunderbird's development. Mozilla believes it's better for the developers behind the open-source e-mail client to work on other projects, i.e. Firefox OS. They claim they will not be outright stopping Thunderbird." You can also read the letter at pastebin.
Well, lets face it, the last major contribution to email was the "discussions view". Not much has changed in the way of email. The standards have been the same, the security is over an SSL standard, the display is either plain text or HTML, and anti-spam is handled by people like spamhaus.
What more is there for email?
Boy was that leaked fast. I've been using thunderbird for years and never have had much trouble with the mail client. Its pretty stable. Probably won't hurt anything to temporarily take resources off of it. But I hope they don't discontinue it entirely. I feel its way better than Outlook.
Exactly. The browser was perfectly adequate back in the 3.0 days.
In fact, server auto-discovery has made it difficult to configure Tbird on my systems, since I do my own imapd but rely on my ISP's smtp.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
And tell them to go find something else to work on. Firefox is officially trash now, never used thunderbird (but I don't know anyone else that does either so whatever) and I know I for wont be touching firefox os after seeing how bad the browser platform has gotten in the last couple years.
Firefox is the least ram hungry browser available! Chrome and even IE 9 last year kicked Firefox 4 ass in on a silver platter. However, the quality is considerable better for their browser at least.
I installed FF 3.6 on a machine to test something and it was PAINFUL and slow to scroll and ram and disk hungry. I was so used to it for so long I forgot about what made Chrome so special in 2009 - 2011 when people started using it.
I still feel comfortable using it and if Mozilla fixes just a few more things I may just switch back to using it.
http://saveie6.com/
Thunderbird isn't a commercial product. It doesn't have to add arbitrary bullet points every 18 months so they can sell an upgrade. There is eventually a point where it's good enough and adding anything to it would detract. If only more software would do this.
I have used Thunderbird for a long time, and am sad to see developers being removed from it. I don't want my mail in "the cloud," especially when the cloud fails. Web browsers suck for managing email, and the stand-alone client does a far superior job. I can have a back-up of my own messages, and view them off-line any time I want. Stop ceding your privacy, and power, to "the cloud." When it comes back to bite you, you will regret it. "Oh, you want to access your old email? We archived it, and there is a fee to have us reload it for you." Just wait, it will happen.
Want the "Reload" button back where it used to be? Right-click, "Customize", drag the reload button where you want it, click "Done".
You're welcome.
I started with Netscape Mail in 1995 and then painlessly moved to Thunderbird when it was released. I've been with it ever since then and am unlikely to change. Most every new release has some small but nice improvement, and no major detriments of the sort that Firefox has suffered. I refuse to use the vaunted cloud or any sort of webmail.
Under the ECPA of 1986, all mail left on the server after 180 days is fair game. Law enforcement does not need a warrant, just a subpoena, and you'd better cough up the mail. This is because back in 1986, all mail clients stored locally. Leaving your mail on the server all the time was considered rude, frankly. It's your shit, take it and get out of here.
26 years later, people are encouraged to leave their mail on the server for years. Google even goes so far as to tell people they don't ever have to delete. But the law has not changed. It's still the same old ECPA which assumes you don't give two cents for stuff you left on the server for more than 6 months.
Tbird and other mail clients allow you to grab the mail off the server and delete it off the server and store it locally. Once this is done, and the mail is in your possession only, it is no longer covered by the ECPA, but rather the 4'th and 5'th amendments to the US Constitution.
--
BMO
I think the hilarious thing about the "bug" is that there is an operating system in this day and age that can't handle upper/lower case in filenames correctly. I'm spilting the blame 50/50 between Windows and Thunderbird.
Although this is a problem unique to Windows, it's not really a Windows bug. You can tell Windows to do the rename in those circumstances and it will. Thunderbird was the one that barfed.
What happened was that Thunderbird was written to ask if a file exists before doing the rename. Windows, ignoring the case said "Yep!" and so it refused to do the rename. This is expected behaviour. The fix is just to check if the names are the same if they're both lcase'd, and to skip the existence check if it's true, then tell Windows to do the rename.
This isn't really the sort of thing where a bug report would be sent to Microsoft.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Ha. Let's see, counting ... yep, I have seven different email accounts that I have to keep an eye on at least hourly, and a few more that I need to check less often. Gmail is just one of them. (No, forwarding them all to gmail is not an option.) I'm sure I'm going to maintain seven different web pages to dink around with each email - especially since most of the webmail clients don't do simple things like select and delete/move numerous emails at once, or drag and drop. Some webmail clients are truly horrendous (network solutions comes to mind)
Using TB I can move mail between accounts as well as between folders within accounts. I can use the same filters for mail coming in or going out on different accounts. And no ads, or tracking cookies, etc.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
What more is there for email?
Something more for Thunderbird is integrated instant messaging. I want unified email and instant messaging in one application so I'll have unified contacts and search. The number of instant messaging services supported by Thunderbird seems like it will be limited at first but that will improve with time and perhaps there will be add-ons available to support more services.
Actually, I happen to know personally the guys who design the FireFox interface, and they told me that they moved that button specifically in order to piss you off. I mean you, personally, Slashdot user handle 'Tough Love'. They told me that. If you customize your layout to show the button again, I bet they'll switch it back, just to piss you off some more.
The person who leaked this memo did so for a reason. He believes that things like confidential notices to Mozillians and planned press releases a few days later are part of where Mozilla is going wrong. The community should be informed and their feedback should be discussed openly before such decisions are made. The way that Mozilla operates today is more like any other large and secretive company than a community-driven effort. Which is, arguably, what they have become (at least judging from their revenue and the large number of employees).
Wherever you stand on this decision, the person who pasted the confidential message to Pastebin didn't do so out of spite, or because he was being "a dick", but because he's concerned about what Mozilla is becoming. Here's the commentary at the end of the leaked memo:
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari