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Mozilla Seeks New Home For Email Client Thunderbird
Reader chefmonkey writes: In a report commissioned by Mozilla to explore the next home for Thunderbird, two potential new hosts have been offered: the Software Freedom Conservancy (host to git, boost, QEMU, and a host of other projects) and The Document Foundation (home of LibreOffice). At the same time, the report discusses completely uncoupling Thunderbird from the rest of the Mozilla codebase and bringing in a dedicated technical architect to chart the software's roadmap.
Given that the two named organizations are already on board with taking Thunderbird under their wing, is this a new lease on life for the email program Mozilla put out to pasture four years ago?In December last year, Mozilla Foundation chairperson Mitchell Baker had argued that the organization should disentangle itself from the Thunderbird email client in order to focus on Firefox. It appears the Firefox-maker is all set to part ways with Thunderbird.
Given that the two named organizations are already on board with taking Thunderbird under their wing, is this a new lease on life for the email program Mozilla put out to pasture four years ago?In December last year, Mozilla Foundation chairperson Mitchell Baker had argued that the organization should disentangle itself from the Thunderbird email client in order to focus on Firefox. It appears the Firefox-maker is all set to part ways with Thunderbird.
Firefox is just a clone of Chrome at this point.
WTF? I've been a happy t-bird usere since practically day one. I'd be curious to know what other unix/linux users are using for mail clients on the desktop. No, I don't do the web-mail thing and i'm not about to start.
C|N>K
Yes. I use Thunderbird at home and have used it for many years. It works, i.e., it allows me to send and receive e-mail, and doesn't seem to be terribly buggy. What more do you need?
There's very little maintenance or development that needs to be done. Which is probably why Mozilla is in a hurry to get rid of it. They can't figure out a way to fuck it up like they did Firefox.
Lightning has been integrated into Thunderbird for some time now.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Mutt under Linux (often via ssh or Putty). Some things just work well.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You must be happy to get all these replies.
Thunderbird is about the only full featured mail client available.
On top of that it's available on Windows and Linux and it works quite well, regretfully and strange enough there is still no Android client.
Kmail is another nice mail client for Linux users.
I would use it but for the impossibility to select which senders are allowed html.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Keep in mind, The Foundation set up a whole sister company to Mozilla Corp., called Mozilla Messaging, to work on Thunderbird. They even got a nice office in Vancouver. But then David Asher, the Messaging CEO, and several other engineers just decided they'd rather work on something else. The decided to run a Lab, without telling the actual Mozilla Labs, until they released something.
Moreover, until TBird was officially booted, the 4-5 employees who were really dedicated to TBird (like standard8), were at the mercy of the Browser engineers to fix Gecko bugs. Browser engineer are brilliant, but basically dicks. They ignored Thunderbird, and they also trash talked the Services group, when things like FF Sync were being developed.
Then of course the Boot2Gecko project spawned out of nowhere with Andreas' post, and the new corporate heads decided to "streamline." They had hired a lot of business folk, including the new CEO, and they were all about handy-wavy visions and cohesive narratives encompassing everything Mozilla does. Tbird just didn't fit that narrative, despite its success and user base.