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.

Comments

Re:Good idea

[xombo]

Thunderbird is a separate binary package from Firefox. It's not an Add-On. Sure, it uses XUL and the same underlying code. But, it's not like the old days with the whole Mozilla Communicator suite which included Browser, E-mail, Instant Messaging, etc. etc. etc... which was something akin to what their parent company (at the time) AOL was doing with their all-in-one client.

Switch to Windows mail?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

LibreOffice

[Tim Locke]

Would the LIbreOffice project be interested in picking up Thunderbird? After all Microsoft Office has Outlook.

Anyone else with security concerns?

[Steve1952]

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?

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what you are talking about, right? You make it sound like Thunderbird is part of Firefox. It's not. It's a stand-alone application. Try to learn what you are using.

I guess I'm the only one who likes Thunderbird?

[sremick]

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.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who likes Thunderbird?

[SteveSgt]

What SRemick said.

AFAICT, the only people who like using webmail are people who don't actually rely on email.

Nobody can do this (yet) with a lame webmail client, nor even very well with Apple Mail nor Outlook:
- Manage six or more email accounts, with hundreds of mailbox folders
- Run rules or scripts automatically shuffling low-priority mail into those folders like discussion mailing lists, server error messages, and assorted bulk email that you personally don't classify as spam
- Receive mail in one inbox, and reply to extended threads with quotes from another

I won't even touch on digital signing and encryption.

Then there's the whole bit about who owns and have access to your email. I haven't personally read all of the fine print in Google's, Apple's, nor Microsoft's email service terms-of-service documents, but I suspect you're not guaranteed anywhere near the meager protection your money gets in a checking account.

What other cross-platform options are there? Nobody seems to be making any suggestions.

Re:I guess I'm the only one who likes Thunderbird?

[PvtVoid]

Nope. For example, I run my own IMAP server, and access via Thunderbird (or K-9 on my Android device). I'm not sure why TFA calls the product "anachronistic". What should it do in 2015 that it doesn't?

Leaving Windows? Use Thunderbird

[CaptainOfSpray]

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.