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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.
One major advantage is that Firefox for Android allows ad-blockers. Chrome doesn't.
And yes, I know desktop Chrome allows ad-blockers. But there is a value in having both desktop and mobile in sync therefore I use Firefox on both.
Palemoon is a thing that exists. If you're a Windows user, it's clearly the best way forward for those seeking refuge from Mozilla's mismanagement.
I'm not sure what Thunderbird needs. As far as I can tell, it's fine. It's not buggy and all the features I want to use work. Other than security fixes, what more do I want out of a mature mail client?
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
So if Mozilla gets rid of Thunderbird completely, what software will they have left that has actual users?
Firefox is the obvious one, but its users are fleeing left and right. The latest stats show Firefox is down to about 7% of the market on all platforms, across all versions.
Firefox for Android is basically not used at all. It's at 0.4% of the market. Yes, that's less than half of 1%!
Seamonkey probably has seen much less use than even Firefox for Android.
Firefox OS has probably seen much less use than even Seamonkey.
Persona never got anywhere at all.
Bugzilla is ancient tech, only used by legacy users.
Servo is a joke. Even for an "experimental" rendering engine, it's damn near useless.
Rust is nothing but hype. Its only major user so far has been Mozilla, and some high schoolers who tried it out on a weekend and put their mostly-incomplete libraries on GitHub to rot.
So with Thunderbird out of the picture, and their other software seeing minimal to no use, Mozilla will pretty much have no user base once the remaining Firefox users flee.
How do they expect to get lucrative search details when next to nobody is using their products?
How do they propose to survive as an organization with limited incoming funds?
This might be a good fit.