Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla May Separate Itself From Thunderbird Email Client (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A company-wide memo distributed throughout the Mozilla Foundation by chairperson Mitchell Baker argues that the organization should disentangle itself from the Thunderbird email client in order to focus on Firefox. She said, "Today Thunderbird developers spend much of their time responding to changes made in core Mozilla systems and technologies. At the same time, build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to pay a tax to support Thunderbird." Both projects are wasting time helping each other, and those demands are only going to get worse. She says many within Mozilla want to see it support community-managed projects without doing the bulk of the work on it, and perhaps Thunderbird could be one of those projects. Baker stresses that no decisions have been made yet — they're starting the conversation early to keep the community involved in what happens to Thunderbird.
It could still live on as an optional add-on, but focusing on making a really good browser is a great idea.
They had their time, and we've moved on.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
mozilla will seperate the integrated face system from the project.
I'm about to separate myself from the Thunderbird mail client as well, because the performance has gone down the crapper for me in the last year or so. When I hit "archive", the program often hangs for 30 seconds to a minute. Compacting the folder does nothing. I deleted a few years worth of old e-mail to see if that would help, but seriously, a modern program should not be choking on a few hundred MB of e-mails.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Unlike the Firefox "browser", Thunderbird is actually kind of useful as an application.
The Mozilla fpundation should just disband and leave their stuff for adults to handle. If there still is someone willing.
It's probably a good thing.
Seeing as how mozilla has lost their minds and are tearing out core features of firefox just because they can.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
3 months after the last non-Firefox project is handed over to the community, someone will realize that the Mozilla brand is useless, and the Mozilla Foundation will be renamed Firefox Foundation.
Smart move. Laying off unknown niche products such as Thunderbird, and focusing on widely used projects such as Firefox OS. Way to go, Mozilla, I am sure that's the road to success.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
So, a community-supported Thunderbird, just like SeaMonkey? Offload everything to the community. The community then spends 80 % of its time figuring out how to fix the build breakages MozCorp introduced this month.
And then their build infrastructure gets 'best-effort' support treatment from Mozilla and then they have to wait half a year to get a OS / compiler upgrade before they can get a Windows build working.
I'm not treating this as welcome news.
(Incidentally, SeaMonkey's mail client is pretty tightly coupled with Thunderbird, and bugfixes to TB are bugfixes for SM.)
Why should Mozilla keep an Open Source email client alive?
After all, everyone loves Outlook and Windows Mail and Apple Mail, and those corporations know what's best for us.
Great, another "girl" ruining software...
CAP === 'posers'
As someone who uses both at home (where its my choice), I honestly don't see what integration there currently is now.
They are completely separate executables. Perhaps under the scenes they use some common UI code, but if so its not anything I ever interact with. So I really don't see what it benefits me, as a user of either or both, that they are under the same umbrella.
Would the LIbreOffice project be interested in picking up Thunderbird? After all Microsoft Office has Outlook.
*** On the Internet, no one knows you're using a VIC-20
I am rather amazed that in a post-Snowden world, everyone is just totally fine with doing away with Thunderbird -- arguably one of the most important open source email systems out there. However I do understand why some large companies, such as Google (gmail) and Microsoft (outlook), might want to get rid of the competition. By the way, who is funding Mozilla these days?
I can't wait for the phone calls and walk ins wondering why I broke their thunderbird. No really, I can't wait, I love billing for dumb shit like this.
Nastily couched in modern ExecSpeak...one team "spends much of their time" whilst the other "pays a tax"...
Pointy-haired bosses everywhere must be pulling on their weasels in delight at such utter crap.
So yes, let Mozilla go (under), Thunderbird team, and try and get things back to when you actually had a decent mail client.
Better still, find a way for Windows/Mac/Nix users to swap encrypted emails easily and maybe you'll even make some market share.
Partner with one of the "secure" email providers?
My business and I are 100% dependant on Thunderbird for mail and calendar and 0% dependent on Firefox since Chrome's got some advantages. Perhaps this is a thing that Mozilla folks don't see since they're so browser focused.
They made a new HTML/Javascript email client for Firefox OS, why not work on converging the features so one email client can scale from mobile to desktop?
What attempt of theirs is this to kill Thunderbird now? Same tired excuses from people who haven't gotten much right in 10 years now. I suppose they use Gmail at Mozilla too. I don't know why they don't just donate their endowment to some worthy cause and turn the lights out. The world doesn't need Chrome and a Chrone clone they call Firefox.
She says many within Mozilla want to see it support community-managed projects
So people within Mozilla want to spend money on things that are not Mozilla. That sounds suspiciously like wasting money.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Now they can focus all of their time on ruining Firefox.
Am I the only person left who actually LIKES and used Thunderbird?
Enough of the "just use webmail" crap. I do in an emergency, but on established computers I live on regularly, you can't beat the better power, speed and versatility of a native email application running locally. I get far more-features in Thunderbird than my email provider's lightweight and simple web interface.
Plus Thunderbird is cross-platform and available on my variety on mixed-OS computers, giving me a consistent local-app email experience across them all.
But I suppose a good portion of the email-app-haters are the same ones as email-haters who would rather use IM, SMS and Facebook messaging rather than proper email. Get off my lawn... some of us actually use the internet for work too, not just play.
imo, it would be good news, if it does occur. I'd hate to see Mozilla mess up Thunderbird as they have messed up Firefox.
I don't think I even know anybody who isn't on gmail these days. I don't wager the loss of Thunderbird is going to impact very many people. It's probably better for Mozilla to focus on their main product: Firefox, rather than one almost nobody even knows exists.
I don't see a lot of complaining about this latest move by Mozilla, Inc.
This also saves them from having to create and maintain common tools / libraries / objects / etc., which always takes WAY more time and effort than just reinventing the wheel. It also gives their hard-working build farm a break from the obnoxious overload of needing to build *two* projects, instead of sitting idle and cooling off.
with thunderbird is NOT why firefox has tanked.
quit copying google... google takes users not by being better, but because they have money to burn on marketing.
quit adding bloat back to the browser....
quit making unnecessary changes just for the sake of making changes.
When advising users who want to leave Windows, I tell them to install T-bird, let it import all their emails and address book from , and copy the result to Linux, when T-bird picks it up and uses it in a "It Just Works" manner. I have never seen another migration that was so effortless. You may understand that I don't want T-bird to disappear, or updating to stop, because there needs to be a painless way to get your stuff out of the hands of the Beast.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Use slack
Then which email client should Slackware users be using?
I think I know what happened, and it's more logistical than technical. The new batch of developers didn't write the old code (no matter how good it was), and the new batch of managers didn't make the old decisions (no matter how good they were). As a developer, one is typically partial to one's own creations. (It's my baby now.) And as a manager, one is typically partial to one's own policies. (It's my troop now.)
My hunch is simply that the major direction changes in firefox/thunderbird coincided with the replacement of both developers and managers. The new developers had little respect for the old code, and the new managers had little respect for the old decisions, and the result is a 180-degree change of direction from both the old code and the old policies.
First, they still plan on killing Firefox by turning it into a Chrome-clone, despite pleas from their users and app-builders.
Second, they seem to have forgotten what "collaboration" and "write once, use in multiple places" mean.
Third, who cares? Mozilla is no longer relevant.
I've used Thunderbird in Linux as my email client for years, and plan to continue using it. I don't need new features or software updates. The damn thing works, so leave it alone.
I agree with the sentiment, although for reasons that probably differ from Mozilla's. Mozilla has been mismanaging and making Firefox an increasingly undesirable browser. That Mozilla has pretty much been ignoring Thunderbird has meant that it has escaped much of the awfulness they have been inflicting on Firefox.
Formally making the two completely independent would be welcome to me because it would further insulate Thunderbird from the actions of Mozilla.
they're starting the conversation early to keep the community involved in what happens to Thunderbird.
Can somebody let Mitchell know that "telling" users how it's going to be is not getting the community "involved." If Mozilla gave two shits about what the community wanted there would be a slew of bugs over 10 years old fixed, and a shitload of stupid crap not added to Firefox.
This is really a desire of Mozillia to separate Thunderbird from Mozillia's money. Mozillia has lots of income from Google. Thunderbird has no independent source of money and could not survive independently without Mozillia's money.
Dropping Thunderbird to focus on Firefox might seem like a good idea, if it were Mozilla circa 2005.
These days, I am concerned that the former Thunderbird efforts won't be redirected to improving performance or squashing bugs in Firefox, but only to further the inane UX related efforts in this futile attempt to mimic Chrome -- trying to copy the superficial reasons (literally) instead of the fundamental reasons that Chrome is successful. That is, until Mozilla converts to a company that is flush with cash from advertising revenue, and has the means to forcefully push their agenda across multiple systems, they should really remind themselves of their roots, and re-embrace what made them successful in the first place.
This might very well give Mozilla license to go "full retard" with Firefox and drive the final nails through its coffin.
Uh-oh. No closing tag for sarcasm... now all the rest of the comments are sarcastic!
(Stolen from this comment.
I've used PostBox, it has the same problems with Archive as GP mentioned.
PostBox also has a complete BS update policy --- Updates within major versions included in your license.
Except they don't update the major version?
We purchased September 2014, and the version was from around June 2014 --- There were no updates for over a year (none, zero, zilch, not even a single security update).
Yet this year (June) saw the release of PostBox 4 - including security updates. Buy Again. FU.
I do think Firefox and Thunderbird need to separate. There purposes are very different and they don't need a whole lot inter connectivity to each other. Thunderbird itself needs some restructuring in it's scope. That's the real problem with the Thunderbird project. Thunderbird needs to bite the bullet and be come a full PIM... yes like Outlook.
When do you ever JUST need e-mail. Just being an e-mail client is too limiting. E-mail, calendaring, tasks, contacts are so closely connecting nowadays. It is very hard to separate any of those and have them work well together. Thunderbird is still holding on to that though and it is hampering its development.
Yes I know there is lightning but it often feels like it is a half-backed hack. Thunderbird needs to connect itself with official support (or start it's own) open-source groupware server. I know there many out there but most of them have partial support at best.
No good deed goes unpunished.
If you use your ISP email, its webmail. If you don't use ISP email, it's Gmail, if its not that, you run your own machine and do webmail there.
I know many accountants who use Thunderbird (whole companies, as a matter of fact). They want to be able to access their email offline, and Thunderbird is safe and easy to use. All of them (4 companies, over 15 people) happened to move from Outlook to Thunderbird by just trying different email clients. They were not recommended Thunderbird by a FLOSS advocate or anything like that. Which is interesting.
This does not mean that Mozilla should not drop it: sure, focusing on FFox might be a good thing. I'm just saying that there is an actual market.
I constantly ask myself, What the fuck is going on at Mozilla?!
Why is it that they seem so determined to harm themselves, as an organization?!
I mean, it is like they've done everything possible to destroy Firefox. I find its usability to be awful now that it tries to imitate Chrome. Yet Firefox still manages to be so much slower than Chrome on my system, and it uses far more memory, too. And Firefox is really the only product of theirs that sees much use!
Thunderbird was already neglected, but after reading this article I have to assume it's pretty much a dead project, or will be soon.
Bugzilla has also been ignored, and has basically become a fossil that few use today.
I don't even know why they bothered with Firefox OS. It was obvious from the beginning that it was going to be a failure. Why the heck did Mozilla think that anyone, aside from a few ideologically-driven wackos, would want to use a mobile OS that's so limited compared to iOS, Android, and the other existing mobile OSes?! Even their attempts to foist this crap on poor third-worlders hasn't gone well, since these third-worlders would rather buy a used Android or iOS device instead!
Their research-oriented projects have been mediocre. Rust is just a limited, awkward language, and way less useful than C++14 in my experience. It's all hype and no substance, in my opinion. Then there's Servo. When I've tried it, well, I think I'd get a better experience browsing modern web sites using IE 3!
Then there was the whole Eich incident. It's absurd to see somebody lose his job just because of his views on marriage, of all things. It's not even something remotely related to technology in any way.
Why, as an organization, is Mozilla making so many decisions with such negative outcomes?
I haven't used Thunderbird in ages, however, it was the best option in the bunch when using a standalone email client.
I can still say this truthfully especially since I use Lotus Notes at work and used Microsoft Outlook exclusively before the days of gmail.
And for the record, Lotus Notes is fucking terrible.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Really, I switched from Firefox to Chrome specifically because if they were going to make their browser indistinguishable from Chrome, I'd rather get the real thing. Firefox used to be great. It suffered too much from bad decisions and being completely tone deaf. The Austrailis update was horrible and FirefoxOS was absolutely a failure and unneeded. Mozilla has been a ship adrift for a few years now and has become more politically than technically focused. I say this as a confirmed SJW who delights in pissing off the libertarians on ./.
It's about money. If there's no kickback from Google or Yahoo, Mozilla foundation doesn't want to be bothered with it. It's no longer about being useful, you see.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'm starting to think Mozilla should disentangle itself from the internet, people and the universe. Fucking power tripping, totally detacted from reality motherfuckers.
UNDO the SHIT DONE to Firefox AND GET CRACKIN with Thunderbord and POLISH IT and FIX THE MOTHERFUCKING ACCOUNT ALREADY EXISTS-BUG THAT'S EXISTED FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG!
And guess what motherfucking slashdot. When i USE CAPS, I MEAN IT AS YELLING!
I say this as a confirmed SJW who delights in pissing off the libertarians on ./.
Ooh, sounds like fun. What's dot-slash?
The Mozilla Foundation is a fucking ghost of its former self. It's a joke. Put it out of its misery.
You "suspect"? No kidding... Both programs (as well as some other, less known ones) are just thin layers on top of libxul.
For years I've been puzzled, why they would not separate libxul out — the way NSPR and NSS are separated out — and make the multiple apps use the shared library instead of the current practice of each app bundling a separate copy of it.
Worse, XUL, actually, is available separately, but all of Mozilla's apps bundle their own, subtly incompatible, subtrees of it.
At some point FreeBSD ports-team considered doing the right thing for FreeBSD-users, at least, but was afraid, Mozilla will prohibit the use of the name "firefox" as a result — as happened to Debian/Ubuntu.
Mozilla is running amok. While driven as a corporation, it does not have paying customers, so we, the users, get the worst of both worlds...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Now we just wait for IBM to put Lotus Notes to pasture and the world will be a better place.
No better excuse to do this. Firefox v FORTY TWO is ready for download/install! I say do it now. Picard says Make it so! And Dubya says Git er done
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Back in ol' good late nineties, I used mostly Pine. Most our servers were either DEC or Sun, and connected through serial ports or telnet. That meant you had same client and behaviour independenly on where you were.
Then email GUI clients appeared. Most of them were quite bad. I still recall using Pegasus and Eudora. I stook to Eudora at the time.
Eudora then evolved, went open-source, and eventually became Thunderbird. Which I use (actually, I use Icedove, but it's the same app).
And each time I have to use Outlook I wish I could just shoot myself. That's no email client - that's a huge mess of a bad product which evolved in the wrong direction - still is not able to do anything right.
I see Thunderbird split from main Mozilla web browser (this is what it's at stake here) as a good thing. Perhaps now they can evolve Thunderbird without sticking to everything-is-a-browser paradigm.
Or I'll eventually go back to Pine. Or implement my own mail client (not as hard as you may believe).
Alvie
Email clients are much simpler than browsers, so how much of a "development tax" is there really? Not that much, I suspect. I wrote a text based email client long ago that had search, reorg, subfolders, spam filter, etc. It wasn't anywhere near the effort a browser would require
The truth is, they just don't "like" it.
And, with firefox, they're mostly interested in wasting time with [yet another language] rust instead of just fully implementing ECMAscript 6.? or streamlining XUL. Browsers are complex, but they're not that "sexy". firefox OS? Gimme a break. When they actually field HW interrupts directly, they can call it an "OS". Bad case of "kernel envy", I'd say [compiler LLs are similarly afflicted].
And, there seems to be some notion that "evolution" is the email client. Or, "just use webmail". IIRC, fedora doesn't even install thunderbird by default anymore [hard for me to tell, since I use fedup].
Well, evolution is a non-starter for me [and I've tried it]:
- evolution is slow.
- Even invocation is slower than thunderbird and even slower than firefox
- Midway, evolution seems to "freeze up" while it's doing something. Despite the GUI stuff, it seems to be modal
- evolution is based on GTK and they spend more time trying to use every GUI feature and thus the presentation is cluttered, inferior, and less useful
- evolution splits the data for a given message into multiple files (e.g. headers in one, body in another), so my existing scripts than scan/manipulate folders have a hard time with it
Thunderbird on its own is just fine, IMO.
So, what are the alternatives? I do use/boot windows, but _not_ for email. So, a posix OS GUI client [I use linux] would be needed? Anybody who knows thunderbird and another have any ideas, based on experience with both?
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
My business and I are 100% dependant on Thunderbird for mail and calendar and 0% dependent on Firefox since Chrome's got some advantages. Perhaps this is a thing that Mozilla folks don't see since they're so browser focused.
Exactly how much money do you or your business pay Mozilla to maintain Thunderbird?
There's a bunch of companies paying them $$$$ for Firefox (like making their search engine the default, etc.). There's probably no one paying them anything for Thunderbird.
They're "not seeing" it because no one's paying them for it.
FossaMail is a fork of Thunderbird made by the Pale Moon guys.
You are using Pale Moon instead of Firefox, aren't you?
Mozilla wouldn't know a good thing if Brendan Eich handed it to them on a silver platter.
Do it now, because
Firefox v 42 is ready for download!! FORTY TWO!! What is Mozilla waiting for?? We don't want a replacement to systemd; not at the moment. But if you fail to see the significance of that number, move along now...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Mozilla, I have actually donated to you in the past, but I have to admit my faith and continued donations are really starting to waiver lately.
Don't get me wrong; its not because of the Australis and UI changes that many people complain about. I actually enjoy those changes, the cross-platform consistency it brought. That's not the issue.
The issue to me is that I feel like you're slowly abandoning your principles:
If you need money, tell us how it is. Lay out your plan for the next 3 years (a very specific vision!), estimate a figure of money, and maybe we can crowdsource it to happen. I think people are less likely to donate if they can't get clarity into what the money is used for (I know I'm that way).
I think that plan/vision needs to say more specifics like: we're campaigning against all kinds of ads, especially ones that track you and hurt your privacy; we're abandoning 3rd party proprietary things built in to our browser; we're re-focusing on our needs on your security and privacy. We're going to have the most secure browser on the planet, implementing the following list of protocols and standards, we're researching some new protocols and standards and working with the community on them. We're going 64 bit on Windows to take full advantage of performance and security extensions in modern OSes. We're going to make crypto more easy and transparent, both TLS in the browser, but especially we're going to refocus our efforts on Thunderbird and making your email safe with built in idiot-proof PGP encryption and signing. We're also going to work with web vendors to start implementing their own encryption, meaning when you get a notice from your bank, we expect it to be signed by your bank's encryption key and it all happens automagically to keep you safe.
If I don't start seeing more concrete things like this working for the betterment of the internet and my security and privacy on the internet, then my donation dollars will start looking for other projects. I want to know you're working for me, and not using me only to generate money.
So, a posix OS GUI client [I use linux] would be needed? Anybody who knows thunderbird and another have any ideas, based on experience with both?
I personally use KMail (and really the whole Kontact suite) under KDE. It's very nice, has a lot of features, pretty slick integration between apps. I actually think I might prefer it better than Thunderbird.
As KDE now uses Qt5, I think it is easier in theory to port to Windows, but I don't know if anyone has done so yet. I'd like to see more of those apps on other OSes, as I feel like options for Windows/Mac are rapidly dwindling. Losing Thunderbird would be a pretty big blow, unless the community can really rise up and take care of it (similar to the founding of Open Document Foundation for LibreOffice). You pretty much have to use some flavor of Linux or BSD if you expect any freedom or privacy these days.
Possibly the proliferation of mobile devices (iOS and Android) has made the ability for alternate desktops like Linux to become more common place possible; more people are used to the idea of "we need to use open protocols so everything interoperates now", whereas not that long ago I felt like the decision was "Everyone uses Windows, why we would ever think of anything else?". That's been at least one positive. So maybe more open desktops will catch on now that it's not as weird.
Nice to hear some positive feedback on kmail.
I have two gmail accounts. One for sensitive stuff [medical, financial, etc] and I use thunderbird configured for POP3, partly because of gmail's goofy handling of subfolders doesn't mix will with thunderbird using IMAP. So, I just pull everything to local folders and have many filter rules.
The other gmail account was created when I got a smart phone [Samsung galaxy s3] and I just use the samsung email client [using IMAP]. I use it mostly to send links to articles from firefox on the phone, so I can read later on desktop and bookmark there. The other reason is that no sensitive stuff ever shows up on the smart phone.
When I have to access the second account on a desktop/laptop, that's where I've been using evolution. I'll give kmail a try there--thanks.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
Shhhh, we don't want Mozilla to get the idea about monetizing Thunderbird, otherwise they'll start inserting text ads or worse all over.
I use Thunderbird to read and send emails on my gmail account; pretty sure I'm not the only one.
By using Thunderbird, you and I are depriving Google from their advertising money, because we're downloading the text of the mail over IMAP, storing it locally, and then displaying it locally on an application that we basically own.
They can still do marketing stats on you and your emails' text, but they can't do much to you as they don't control thunderbird.
Whereas, when you use google GMail interface (either to access mails received on your gmail's address or any other external email account that you import into the gmail interface), google gets to parse it, (eventually mine your personal info and behaviour for what it is worth), AND THEN: choose relevant ads, and present the ads together with the email's text.
They can now pollute your field of view, and overload your connection bandwidth with stupid ads.
So that's a possible reason for Google not to be interested in helping Thunderbird: It doesn't help them bring money in.
Also as a different reason:
- stand alone client make it easier to implement encryption at *safe end-points under the user's control* (= requirement for an efficient encryption). It's as simple as installing Enigmail and generating a GPG key pair.
- whereas, encryption on a webmail is not trivial and require collaboration with an add-on like Mailvelope (which also breaks the workflow in the usual GUI).
Therefore it's in google's interests to have more people on GMail's webinterface or on android applications rather than Thunderbird.
Less people using end-to-end encryption means more plain text that google can mine the shit of, happily violating your privacy in the name of statistic/marketing purpose.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm Ok with ads in Thunderbird. It's better than not having it at all I suppose, since they're talking about dropping it altogether, so unless some other group decides to pick it up and maintain it, it'll go away or at least get stuck with no maintenance.
The root cause of the problems at Mozilla is that they stopped listening to what their users actually wanted.
They saw users switch from Firefox to Chrome and assumed that being more like Chrome would get those users back when that was the last thing they should have done.
Everyone on Slashdot already knows Mozilla seem to have lost their way. I wrote Forgetting Firefox a while back (which ran on Slashdot), bemoaning the problems - but more to the point, trying to draw attention that mail and groupware should be the next big challenge Mozilla pick up.
Sadly, this new statement implies they're going in the opposite direction.
Mozilla, you already won the browser wars. There's a lot of other work to do.
I think a lot (like 100s of thousands) more people would use it if the Thunderbird coding group would provide or release an API to program it. I know of no program or API I can use to read or extract the data from the mail store once it is in there. Maybe there are APIs but I certainly don't know of any and and at any rate they certainly aren't bull-horned to the coding populace. I don't want to have to sift through 100,000 man pages either (5,000 is fine) and I shouldn't have to either; to learn an API to programmatically access my Thunderbird email. I can programmatically access my outlook email easily in C# or java and write it to Postgres or Derby or SQL Server or any other JDBC connected database. Why is it so consistently impossible to do this with a Thunderbird mail-store, after 10-15 years ion existence?
I use SeaMonkey that uses Thunderbird design, Firefox's Gecko engine, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This is the gal quoted in the summary saying Thunderbird support is like paying a tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
This is who wants Thunderbird to go away.
Sellers of retail e-mail clients. eg. Microsoft clients
People against email encryption. eg. ???
Sans any major protocol changes to email in general, Thunderbird works fine right now. It is cross platform too. The story's message that a well established open source email client is now "not worth it" or "vaporware" is pretty disingenuous. Oh shucks better go get Windows 10 spyware?
On occasion there is a bug marked as do not fix that will re-download all Hotmail/live.com messages again for the hell of it. It wipes local copies of just the live.com folders. It only happens with Microsoft mail servers. Mozilla said it's not on their end. That puts it on Microsoft's end. I've seen several threads about it, and even shills commenting on those threads.
eg. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1091562
gee. hmm. uhh.
Mozilla now views any support for Thunderbird, even the limited support it has been providing for the past three years, as akin to “paying a tax,” in Baker’s words, on top of the work those engineers spend building Firefox.
How much in dollar terms is this "tax"? Bug-fixing a mature application that works well with everything except occasionally Microsoft POP3/IMAP means abandon it?
It is also noteworthy that Thunderbird is encryption friendly.
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable
http://portableapps.com/support/thunderbird_portable#encryption
But pull the plug on cross platform encryption-friendly email clients? Really huh. Oh ya. I'm all psyched out.
Claws mail client runs on windows, Linux and FreeBSD. It has almost feature parity with Thunderbird - some features more , some less than Thunderbird.
Best of all, Claws doesn't use the brain dead email storage format where one file stores all the emails of a folder. It doesn't scale well over gigabytes of folders. It is a frequent source of performance issues and email corruption in Thunderbird.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Mr Tracy, Mr Tracy!
FastMail have a very good webmail service. I haven't tried the first or third of your bullet points, but it supports Sieve rules (RFC 5228). (See here.) FastMail's web client has a nice UI for writing Sieve rules, plus you can enter Sieve code directly.
Disclaimer: I use and highly recommend FastMail, but have no other connection to the company.
Mozilla already announced that they were going to transition the Firefox UI system from XUL/XBL to web-based technologies. There is no way that the small team that maintains Thunderbird could muster the resources to make this transition (for one illustration of why not, take a look at this bug tracker thread about allowing new emails to be composed in a new tab of the main Thunderbird window instead of in opening a separate composition window: https://bugzil.la/449299 ; if that small of a UI change is beyond the resources of the development team, completely reworking the entire UI definitely is). So Thunderbird was going to have to fork the underlying Gecko engine at some point as Firefox started to rip out XUL stuff.
I still use Thunderbird right now becuase I haven't taken the time to find something better. The prospect of Mozilla removing its remaining maintenance support for Thunderbird does make me sad. From a security standpoint, I don't think I could use it once it was no longer actively maintained by someone full time.
Except the mythical man month proved that wrong. What if they put all their resources on goal X, but X isn't what you want?
I argue for thunderbird and a few, focused other programs, to keep their mindset nimble and let good ideas spread internally.
Only a few months ago I finally bit the bullet and switched over from Eudora to Thunderbird. I'd have stayed with Eudora, even though it hasn't been supported in nearly a decade, but everybody's SSL for IMAP/POP has switched to longer keys and other algorithms, so Eudora's 512-bit RSA or whatever could no longer connect to any of my ISPs. At least T-bird knew how to import the Eudora mailboxes cleanly.
Are there alternative email clients that can import mailboxes from Thunderbird, now that I apparently have to move them again?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's just standing in the way of ad-driven, privacy-busting Big Brother Intra Tubes 3.0.
Sorry, they sound exactly like the Microsoft salespeople running around the co I work at: "Mail is dead, use our new shiny 365!".
No, Mozilla ain't my ally anymore.
Does anyone know of a good alternative to Thunderbird, one that ultimately can import from TBird? I have 15 years of email that I don't want to lose, and if TBird is going to be sent down the crapper I want to be prepared with a replacement.
I used KMail for a while, but switched back to Thunderbird because KMail's IMAP support is disastrous.
I remember that i installed it once but didn't know exactly hoe to use Thunderbird so i uninstalled it immediately.
I've been aggravated at T-bird for a year. That's when they broke their addressbook and addressing.
1. Why on *earth* does it add *me* to the mailing list when I hit "reply all" - that's what the send folder's for. And it doesn't do it all the time, just most.....
2.
a) The addressbook search now sucks. I'll type a couple letters... and half the time it sits there and doesn't do anything, and won't, until I delete and retype.
b) Then there's the mistypes - it used to be that if I accidentally hit after typing one letter, it added it to collected addresses... but if I started with that letter, I could go down in the drop-down box and delete it; I can't anymore.
c) A good 1/3rd of the time, it will *not* give me an address that I'll use the most, but one from somewhere that it collected years ago.
d) I'll type, say, std n or std s, and it just sits there, even though those aliases are in the list. Basically, autocompletion's broken.
mark
... I keep using Firefox is because it makes a good match with Thunderbird. No Thunderbird, goodbye Firefox. Hello Chrome.
I only use Outlook because I have to... at work.
I've used Thunderbird for many years and really like it. If they stop development I'll probably use it as-is for years, until it stops working or I really need something it can't do.
What alternative email clients are there if Thunderbird stopped working today? Free and commercial.
Claws Mail. The UI is similar enough to thunderbird that it won't be too difficult a transition.
I use thunderbird configured for POP3, partly because of gmail's goofy handling of subfolders doesn't mix will with thunderbird using IMAP.
That certainly used to be the case but have you tried a recent version? I used to use an add-on that let me setup Thunderbird's IMAP folder paths to work better with Gmail (I think it was H.Ogi's Gmail IMAP Account Setup) but current versions of Thunderbird handle it properly now.
On iOS devices using Gmail I prefer to use the Exchange connector over the Gmail connector. The former uses ActiveSync protocols and seems to work better with Contact and Calendar items, in particular it lets me use the Second Alert feature on Calendar items which you can't do when using the normal Gmail connector.