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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.
I am forced to use Firefox at HP, as in don't have software install privilege on my Linux box. Trust me, if I could install Chrome, I would!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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
I know there's a lot of Firefox-hate at the moment (with some good reason), but I use Firefox as my web-browser of choice on Android. Why? Adblock. No other mobile browser has add-ons like Firefox. And the ability to block ads really speeds up the browser compared to Chrome in any real-world situation.
It is a surprise. There are numerous browsers, but few (non-web) email clients. It's pretty much just Outlook.
Seems they have chosen to compete in the saturated browser market, rather than the email client market that has little-to-no competition, and is ripe for a new product that would help every business efficiently manage their day-to-day tasks.
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
How about go fuck yourself. Thunderbird is an excellent email client. Just because you happen to you gmail through a webpage or some horrid MS client doesn't mean it's not useful to someone else, moron.
Just because you don't do something doesn't mean that no one does. It turns out that many other people are not a copy of you.
I use Thunderbird because I prefer POP to IMAP when available. I don't need others snooping my email. But ignoring that Thunderbird is simply the best way to manage multiple email accounts.
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.
I use Thunderbird on Windows but since it we have Ubuntu now I guess that almost counts.
Or let it be Libre?
For any business user, Thunderbird needs integration with a calendar. At the very least, it would need to be able to send and receive calendar invites. There were a number of attempts to add a calendar to Thunderbird, but as far as I can see they all failed, some miserably so.
But now I use SeaMonkey for eMail .
It has the added advantage of being a browser as well
Are they going to drop SeaMonkey too?
Happy t-bird user here, have been for years
Lightning has been integrated into Thunderbird for some time now.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
On gnome, evolution had a tight integration with the DE. But lack of maintenance made it a pain to keep using it. I'm not sure of the current state of the project.
There's always Netscape for your browsing and email convenience, all in a single application, and hardly any bigger than Firefox or Thunderbird each individually. And it has probably the most stable, unchanging UI in the entire business. Accept no imitations.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So true, it almost like people don't having options
I don't use it, but I see your point. The Taj Mahal isn't shit because nobody built an extension on it this century. Horses aren't shit because they've still got only four legs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I use Thunderbird on both Linux and Windows. Having access to emails offline in a (pretty-much) unified cross-platform multi-account client is great. I can go through my email much quicker using a thick client than any web based offering.
Thunderbird?
I'm more of a Night Train man myself...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I haven't used Thunderbird for a few years, but... it always seemed to me to be the best IMAP client out there - doubly so if you had more than one IMAP email account, which has been the case for me.
But while Mozilla hasn't mucked up Thunderbird to the same degree they have Firefox, a couple years back I decided to cut ties with any and all Mozilla products because of all Mozilla's little political and philosophical dramas.
#DeleteChrome
And Lightning is buggy, prone to crashes, and scarfs up resources over time. It's horrific. I've tried it many times, on many platforms, and never had any success except, oddly, Mint. I think it was Mint? It came with Thunderbird and was pre-installed. That one worked just fine. I'm not about to switch my OS just to have an email client with built-in calendaring.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yes it does.... when I install a blocking hosts file....
Oh shit... here comes APK claiming he invented it! Everyone scatter!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Email clients are the landlines of the 2010s.
tone
I miss landlines. No drop outs and higher quality sound.
Web mail interfaces are only really good for quick responses, horrible in a phone screen.
If you want to write a really nicely formatted email you use a client.
IMAP keeps all clients sync'ed so what ever you do on one is the same on the others.
> I would have to guess most of this audience is, too.
Going by this thread, and many others just like it, you'd be guessing poorly.
For the record, I like Thunderbird quite a bit. Opera's got an email client that I've not used in a while. The sooner Mozilla divests, the better. There's surely no one group that would not be better maintainers. It's feature complete. Leave it. Keep it maintained. Call it good. If I have to, I'll learn the damned base and maintain it myself. I'll rip out any way to browse within it and make it open your default web client when you click a link. Then I'll dump full HTML power. It's a damned email client. Plain text is fine. Want to open something? Save it and then open it. You'll adjust.
Hmm... Maybe it's time to fork it?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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?
People are using email clients all the time, that email client on your phone is using imap to communicate to your mail storage on gmail. I see very few people using their phone's browser to login to the mobile version of any webmail. I see phone specific native clients in wide use. Gmail's webclient is very good, but for certain use cases a dedicated client works better. And since gmail provides standard imap access, thunderbird works with it just fine.
Email client software is far from dead, and it would be nice to keep thunderbird alive.
I'm about 10 years past using email clients. I would have to guess most of this audience is, too.
The /. audience are generally nerds who understand how IT systems work, value their privacy and security, and know better than to entrust the security of their personal data to third parties with a financial stake in violating that privacy. We are not the Facebook generation, content to upload all of the inane, boring details of our private lives onto corporate servers for the benefit of mass surveillance and data mining. Anybody concerned with privacy and security doesn't leave their entire life's email history sitting on some third party's servers, ready to be harvested by hackers or government agencies at the next opportunity. You might was well start storing all of your personal finances, pictures, and documents on "the cloud" unencrypted too.
Compared to gmail accessed via web...
Great, if you only have one email account. I'm a student, so I have an official university email address that they insist upon using for all correspondence. I'm also an employee, so that's another email account. I have a gmail account for some personal stuff. I also have another free email account. I have an email address on the virtual server that I rent. Each of these accounts has its own web mail interface, different from the others.
With Thunderbird, I can combine all five email accounts into one common interface, so I can send and receive email while keeping my accounts segregated. I know I can forward all of these accounts to a single account, but I prefer to keep them separate for a variety of reasons.
Blocking host file is nowhere near to be as convenient (can't be disabled on the fly or for a specific site), plus you need a rooted device.
Google wants to eliminate competition to gmail.
They still need browsers to make people access gmail, search and docs.
So they only pay for firefox to Mozilla.
Folks, it is time to create an alternative to the traditional web and email. Drop smtp, build something new. Defeat spam using captchas. Rethink the monster HTMLCSSJS has become. Make the RPI the reference platform; work against the insance JS trend.
Compared to gmail accessed via web, email clients offer slower startup,
In which world?
higher bug count
I'd suppose it depends which ones are you comparing.
inferior search tools
That might well be, it's not a feature I use much.
A crazily confusing configuration burden
It's clear that you are about 10 years past using email clients. You'll be happy to know that nowadays, just giving your address usually autoconfigure server options.
, create a deep disincentive to access email from any machine but your own,
True, but that I consider an advantage, except sometimes. For these sometimes, there is the smartphone. Also, a thing colled Thunderbird portable, where you can have your email in an USB stick that you carry with you, may be useful.
The rest of the rambling I don't fully comprehend. But I'll now state my dislikes of web based clients.
- Lack of autonomy. They depend on you being online. They mostly need a fast connection.
- Lack of control. They change the interface when they feel like it, and there is nothing you can do about it.
- Lack of space. Granted, the space limits are ample, but they are never enough. Not for me, at least.
- Lack of freedom. You are forced to use the mail address that they allow you, or pay for the privilege. If you want to change providers it's not easy to transfer all you messages to the new one.
- Lack of privacy. All your data, your contacts, everything is stored in the same place, for every interested party to peruse at will.
- Lack of flexibility. If you want to use several addresses from different providers, you are mostly toast.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Alex P. Keaton? Why would he care about a hosts file? He was always a money-grubbing business guy, not a computer nerd.
Interestingly, I've had no problem with Lightning (in Thunderbird/Windows) for years. Yes, there were some issues in the past when a Tbird version change borked a bunch of extensions, including Lightning. Hasn't happened for a long time. And I don't think there's a reasonable alternative any more (Outlook Express? Gimme a Break!). Windows Mail (in 8 and 10; I use 7 mostly) is fundamentally broken (in 10, won't work with Yahoo mail) and I will not use a MS calendar application outside of a phone (they don't need copies of ALL of my details). I don't like webmail - prefer to keep my archive on my own machine. So what *is* there as a reasonable alternative assuming Tbird dies?
> Compared to gmail accessed via web, email clients offer slower startup
Why would you ever close your e-mail client other than to start the latest version with that security bug fix?
> higher bug count
TB is missing newer features like calendaring (lightning is pretty broken) I'll give you, but they haven't bugged it out with new features in years. If nothing else, TB is at least stable and mostly bugfree for the stuff it does support.
> inferior search tools
TB search worked great before we switched to Gmail as our e-mail provide. Now it's uselessly slow. But with our local e-mail server it was wonderful. Not better than Gmail search, but close to as good.
> a crazily confusing configuration burden
The only thing I can imagine you're referring to is the ability to configure multiple e-mail accounts or something. That's a feature. You can connect to whatever standards-compliant backend(s) you choose. And even some that aren't as standard's compliant as the claim to be (*cough* exchange *cough* gmail).
> create a deep disincentive to access email from any machine but your own
You mean "naturally directs users to work on personal and potentially sensitive stuff from a trusted environment instead of putting their password in to whatever keylogger-infested, malware-toting filthy keyboard and screen they happen to walk past."
> a centrifugal bumble-puppy model for where your emails reside that can be relied upon to place the emails "on the wrong machine" (or none at all, or N-fold on each of M machines) when you need it most, and they bifurcate your message store when you change jobs or ISPs, etc.
Wait...what!?!. Maybe you're still using POP and have some silly config or something, but e-mails are stored on the provider's server. We cache them on the client for speed and offline access here in 2016. Oh yea, we also cache them on the client so when you forget to make a copy before telling the man "I Quit!", you still have them all. Try doing that with Gmail.
> Moreover, I am spared the horrors of the aged hacks and platform-bound kludgery intended to address the above faults
I'll give you the "aged hacks and platform-bound kludgery", but unless you're one of the few brave souls who dares to look at the source code, I can't imagine what of those horrors you actually experience. TB works. It just doesn't do newfangled stuff like google's keyword (to:, in:) searching and calendaring.
The Mozilla Foundation has screwed everything up the had in their clutches, except Thunderbird, possibly because they lacked the money to do a number on it too. If Thunderbird gets new maintainers that actually have a clue and are not just following the latest UI-hype or waste all their money on worthless gender-related projects, it has a bright future. Firefox is dead though, and the only reason for that is incompetence and mis-management by the Mozilla Foundation leadership. Talk about wrestling failure from the clutches of success.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Evolution? Been using it since the beginning, although I have the sensation that version 1.4 was much more user friendly and feature packed.
Onda Technology Institute
Seamonkey is Netscape...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ignore him. Haters do not understand the concept of "facts".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Having just had a landline repaired, it's fairly obvious that the institutional knowledge base for maintaining POTS service is decaying. I expect a digital transition in the relatively near future.
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.
Well, stupid people have no options and they start hating those that do. Then they post about it and make their stupidity obvious to all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Thunderbird gives a sigh or relief from the lifeboat as it watches SS Firefox go down.
Firefox is just a clone of Chrome at this point.
Using that logic Chrome is just a clone of Firefox at this point.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
On Linux there is no substitute for Thunderbird.
It's more like on Windows there's no fully-featured and user-friendly substitute unless you got the Microsoft route (which, fair play, but many of us won't for one reason or another). On Linux there's KMail, Trojitá, Evolution, Geary . . .
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Web access is ok when you have only one email address, but when you have an address for your job/university/organisation(s) you belong to, it quickly becomes unmanageable. Not to mention many of those addresses have a bad web UI or none at all. I certainly believe you haven't used an email client in a decade, because most of the problems you mentioned have been solved long ago, at least in Thunderbird anyway. It definitely starts faster and has fewer bugs than a browser. It has a profile system like FF, allowing you to copy your configs across multiple machines. I honestly don't know what your problem with IMAP is, it addresses the issues you said and I'm yet to encounter any of its "horrors".
Maybe it will be an opportunity to have a well maintained Thunderbird, but if not, it's worrying for email. I don't want to replace email with Facebook/Whatsapp/orWhatnot.
For now, there is Apple Mail which only runs on Macs,
Outlook which only runs on Windows (and is a terrible IMAP client, probably to force you to get an Exchange server)
And Gmail which only runs on... Google. And only if you have an Internet connection.
I feel Thunderbird is essential, and hope it finds someone to take care of it.
The problem is that many of the emails people get these days are formatted using HTML. So you need a decent browser engine in order to show many e-mails.
You might argue you do not need HTML in e-mails, that the message is the important thing. However, that is a discussion for another time, like ten years ago.
I'm about 10 years past using email clients. I would have to guess most of this audience is, too.
Um nope.
Compared to gmail accessed via web, email clients offer slower startup,
Compared to launching a browser, clicking on your webmail bookmark, signing in, waiting for your mail to load? Or do you give webmail a headstart be prelaunching the browser? My mail client starts up just as fast as my browser does, if not faster.
higher bug count
Not really, mail is pretty mature after all, it mostly just works. But sure, it does a lot more stuff, and has capabilities the web clients simply don't have at all, so sure some of that has bugs.
, a crazily confusing configuration burden
Its mostly a case of entering your email address and password. The same as the web versions. Sure if you've got some byzantine security labyrinth to get through to check your mail then its complex to set up.
, create a deep disincentive to access email from any machine but your own,
An advantage if you care at all about security.
a centrifugal bumble-puppy model for where your emails reside that can be relied upon to place the emails "on the wrong machine" (or none at all, or N-fold on each of M machines) when you need it most,
It's on you if you aren't syncing your mail. Hell, I use Office365 with 3 different companies, and I use the desktop Outlook client.
and they bifurcate your message store when you change jobs or ISPs, etc.
Yeah, webmail doesn't change that. And if you've ever tried to migrate your mail between ISPs when all you have is webmail... well... for most of them, you need to do it with a desktop client. Gmail and Office365 have some migration tools, and they work, with some caveats... and issues usually need to be fixed with a desktop client.
Moreover, I am spared the horrors of the aged hacks and platform-bound kludgery intended to address the above faults (e.g., IMAP or whatever Office thinks it provides).
And instead have all manner of other annoying issues. Browser application window management is an outright clusterfuck, with your mail being in a browser tab mixed with your other tabs, a new message popping in a new browser window, your taskbar being completely unable to differentiate between what's your 'collection of email windows' from all your other browser and web app windows.
Its also a royal PITA to be logged into multiple accounts at the same time (2 different Its a royal PITA to copy or move multiple messages, or folders, or multiple selections between multiple accounts. And excruciating if the accounts belong to the same provider. (e.g. two different and separate google apps for enterprises accounts...or two separate office365 accounts... I practically need two separate browsers to do that. Meanwhile, both thunderbird and outlook handle it gracefully.
You also pretty much give up any pretense of encrypted/secure messaging, and expose yourself to browser xss and other browser related flaws that simply can't happen with a standalone client.
inferior search tools
This one point I agree with you. subject/sender search in thunderbird is great, but its full body search needs work. But outlook backing onto exchange/office 365 is very good; although local mail is subject to windows searchindexer which can cause problems sometimes. I'd like to see much better search / indexing come to Thunderbird... there's no inherent reason it can't do it.
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."
Client based calendars just don't cut it anymore. They need to just integrate some of the already available cloud calendars.
You're mad.
A local copy of your mail is the only reliable and fast way to access and especially organise mail, even more so for multiple accounts.
Webmail is nice for occasional use on a borrowed computer, for the rest it is a joke.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
They need to just integrate some of the already available cloud calendars.
Why would I want to share the details of where I'm going and who I'm seeing with anyone else?
A client-based calendar is exactly what I want. The only thing better would be a trivially installed calendar server I can host on my own systems with negligible effort, so multiple devices could more easily share the same details.
If I didn't want that sort of independence and control, for both calendar and mail, why would I still be using a product like Thunderbird in the first place?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They need to just integrate some of the already available cloud calendars.
The problem with cloud calendars are just how many of them there are.
- You might be using Google Calendars.
- But your friends organise your group's events over facebook
- And your local pen and paper RPG club coordinates over doodle.
- Then your work uses an MS-Exchange server
- and there's a couple of RDF-exported calendar you need to take into account too.
In this context: you DEFINITELY need 1 single calendar platform that is able to coordinate between all the above.
Palm's (then later HP's) webOS with its Synergy concept was absolutely marvelous from that point of view for smartphones)
(Jolla's Sailfish OS is the closest thing I've found as a successor for smartphones)
For desktop, LightningBird is a good candidate, once all the quirck have been ironed out (and some of the most important plugins included as a standard).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"Anybody concerned with privacy and security doesn't leave their entire life's email history sitting on some third party's servers"
Well, not intentionally at least.
How's maildir doing these days? They've been talking about it for so long that I have no idea whether it's safe to use.
You must be new here. Beware: Dangers lurk beneath the surface and certain words should not be uttered lightly.
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?
Same here. Switched from Eudora to Thunderbird over a decade ago and have had very few problems with it. I use it to access 2 gmail accounts, I like having all my email on my local machine and I think gmail's idea of tagging vs folders is brain dead.
It is a surprise. There are numerous browsers, but few (non-web) email clients. It's pretty much just Outlook.
Wow. The complete opposite is true.
Perhaps if you add a bunch of qualifications such as "with XYZ features" and "with user bases larger than X" and "with built in support for calendaring" and "with native exchange support", then maybe there are few native email clients matching your criteria. However, "non-web email clients" is a very large category, and I'd bet money there are more than there are unique web browsers.
Lightning has gotten MUCH better. I stopped using it and came back to it last fall. HUGE improvement. It's my email/calendar program of choice now.
Lightning will sync with an CalDAV calendar and Google Calendar with another plugin. I use it with my Google Calendar and my iCloud calendar. Works great,
Owncloud is your answer.
Agreed. I've used Tbird on Mac & Linux for ten years now and love it.
Everything is a clone of Mosaic, if you want to get technical.
I have Firefox and Chrome installed. For no objective reason whatsoever, I prefer Firefox. Don't know why. But I just like Firefox better.
Out of all the browsers, I like Gnome Web the best right now. If uBlock Origin worked with it, and it had good KeePass integration, I'd switch over permanently.
This might be a good fit.
Palemoon is a thing that exists...
Fossamail is also a thing that exists. It's a fork of Thunderbird, provided by the people who brought us Pale Moon. You can get it here:
http://www.fosshub.com/FossaMail.html
From my preliminary look at it, it's indistinguishable from T-bird. And under Linux it didn't even require installation - just unpacked it, copied over the contents of my Thnderbird profile folders, and fired it up. Works just fine.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, have a look at FossaMail. Forked from Thunderbird by the Pale Moon devs. Pretty much indistinguishable from Thunderbird. Download via FossaMail.org, install, (in Linux it's just an unzip-and-move process), copy the contents of your profile folder over, and you're up and running.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The same people who forked Firefox into Palemoon also forked Thunderbird into Fossamail.
Why block on a file per device when you could just block at the router instead?
This is why my mother-in-law uses it. It doesn't change without reason, and it just works for her. Too much software changes too often "just because". A long-term stable client is just what she needs.
One of the nice things about a classic email program is that it makes it easy to ignore spam formatted in HTML.
Maybe Thunderbird has gotten a LOT better, but when I was using it (6-7 years ago) it was a royal pain in the ass. I kept Firefox and threw away Thunderbird. Windows Live Mail is way better than that stinking pile.
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?
It needs XULRunner. That's the crazy enormous Mozilla runtime thingy all desktop Mozilla products use. That they used to support XULRunner as a separate product that you could use as a big library for your own projects, but some time ago they discontinued releasing it as a separate product. Current Mozilla products continue to use it, but given the indiscipline of not insisting on a clean, well-defined public interface between library and end-user products, it seems like an unwise choice to use for projects outside of Mozilla. Given this state of affairs, Thunderbird would be on really shaky ground as an independent project still dependent on XULRunner.
Can some independent group really manage to reimplement Thunderbird around some other library in a huge hurry? Might they try simply to fork XULRunner instead? It's not a happy situation.
I'm also a happy long time Thunderbird user.
...because, of course, Thunderbird == Unix/Linux. That having been said, it would be nice to see Thunderbird handed off to someone willing to handle bugs that have been around for almost SEVEN YEARS. (See also, Deleting the last read message opens the previous message.)
Good thing you don't want to switch back to Eudora - last time I checked, it was basically a customized Thunderbird.
There is also Comodo IceDragon which I've found is good for your social media types, with its "post to Facebook" integration and its SiteInspector malware scanner. You can remove either if you wish but I've found its a great drag and drop for social media users, just slap in ABP and call it a day.
As for Thunderbird? It doesn't "need" anything and that is the problem as far as Mozilla is concerned. Its a flatline market as the vast majority are using webmail now so there simply is no growth there. Its a mature product for an aging market (I've found the average age for my customers using a dedicated email client is late 40s to mid 50s) and as these customers die out its usage will slowly drop until there are nobody left. I'm sure the Tbird users will get mad at me but hey, I agree it sucks, but kids will be kids and they use webmail. Hell a lot of my early 20s customers don't even use fricking Webmail, its ALL done on fucking social media like Facebook. Is that super stupid? Yep but they give exactly zero shits about privacy and that is where their friends are so that is all they give a fuck about. They just live on that shit, if you've ever had to deal with one of their phones or tablets you know what I'm talking about, you unlock it and you are just assaulted with social media, its all tweets and status updates and I swear it feels like dealing with a PC infected with malware...and they LIKE that shit.
So as much as I think Tbird is a nice client I really do not see how anybody is gonna get more adopters for dedicated email, not with the way kids communicate today. All Tbird will probably need is a maintainer and with Moz bleeding to death from its own dumb moves they just don't have the dough to spare.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The first emails were text-only. Then at some point email became a much more versatile communication tool, because we gained the ability to embed images. (When did that happen? I'm guessing about 24 years ago.)
Now, we are long overdue for email clients that let you easily embed video. I'm not talking about
- linking to a video file hosted on some third-party server, or
- video file attachments, or
- having to figure out usage of ungainly templates,
but the convenience of honest-to-goodness embedded videos: when composing messages, the client lets you embed video just as easily as it allows you to embed images. The video data is stored only on the email server until the recipient retrieves the message, and can be played back right in their email client. Nothing appears in their "Downloads" folder, and nothing is handed off to Windows Media Player, or QuickTime Player, or (if using a standalone email client such as Thunderbird) a web browser.
Maybe the free webmail providers are opposed, because it would jack up their storage costs. But that's no reason to cripple the possibilities. They could make it an optional feature for paying members, until the cost of storing embedded videos becomes trivial (as happened long ago to the cost of storing embedded images).
What would it take to make this a reality... RFCs to add to existing email protocols? Or just convincing developers of email clients (like Thunderbird) to add the functionality?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Much thanks for the heads-up, I was not aware of this previously. Checking it out right now, it seems to be what I'm looking for. I only use mutt for roots mail (system).
C|N>K
It is unsafe to view HTML emails from unknown sources.
They can't figure out a way to fuck it up like they did Firefox.
To be fair to Mozilla, they watched Chrome usage sky-rocket with its someone horrid user interface so it probably made some sense to replicate it.
It's back to somewhat tight integration. It's not perfect but it's definitely getting better.
The lapse in Mozilla support for Thunderbird since 2012 has been frustrating and saddening to me. I've used Thunderbird (with its Lightning calendaring and Enigmail for OpenPGP/GnuPG, among other extensions) since just about its inception and I still do today. It has always been the only cross platform and open source, user focused/privacy respecting, newbie-to-guru accessible, full featured and extensible email/PIM client I've found.
Unfortunately , I admit that its age has begun to show since Mozilla stopped funding and focusing upon it. For instance, the lack of support for two-factor authentication for many services (which I believe has been sorted recently, perhaps?), as well as being unable to keep up with some of the newer features in popular webmail clients. One use case I hear frequently is regarding Gmail. Awhile ago, Gmail implemented the options for pre-filtered category-based inboxes, separate from Labels (ie Priority, Updates, Promotions and Sales, etc..) but Thunderbird even when connecting via IMAP can't easily support this feature. This seems like something for which a solution could be created, either as an extension or (preferably) a native Gmail support feature (much like how Thunderbird automatically knows the Gmail account servers for SMTP/IMAP and the like) ,if there was only some funding/drive to do so. Likewise, supporting new generations of encrypted mail services, such as Tutanota and (especially) ProtonMail, are currently missing. These services claim to be built in such a way that you have to either connect via their special app or webmail because of how they handle encryption. I don't want to be forced into using webmail or some sort of app for each provider, but those behind these services hypothesize that at very least there could be an addon/plugin of some sort that would allow for more comprehensive encryption. These are just a few of the places that Thunderbird should shine, but instead is being left behind.
It seems that Mozilla has made a handful of positive steps recently (ie - embedding a cut-down version of the open source Disconnect addon into Firefox's private browsing, Firefox Hello etc..) but they've been stumbling back through a larger share of negative ones, including leaving Thunderbird to rot. Mozilla became a pinnacle of geek friendly yet accessible FLOSS because it offered some great, user focused software with better features as well as privacy/security compared to other offerings - they have to do more than allow Google to lead the way, providing halfassed "also-rans" .
I will support Mozilla as we need their voice when it comes to an open Internet. We must urge them to keep pushing forward, remember what made their software great, including modernizing and bringing Thunderbird to the forefront again.
It does, but its buggy, incomplete, and not suited to a business. We seriously tried using it because Thunderbird as a mail client with IMAP servers worked so much better for us than Exchange. However, the calendar is just not up to it. Sharing calendars, shared calendars such as rooms, its just difficult, buggy, incomplete.
If, the calendars were fixed up to properly support caldav, and in a way that would suit business, Thunderbird could be a rival to Outlook. But its not - Sogo and the like is trying, but when we last tried a couple of years ago, it just wasnt ready.
We jumped shipped to Office 365. Calendar wise we never looked back - however with emails, I still miss the speed and efficiency of our globally distributed Cyrus IMAP servers and Thunderbird - they left Outlook for dead.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
In response to all the palemoongelists on here, I downloaded it recently to see what all the fuss was about. Couldn't see any restored functionality I would miss in Firefox 45.
So if there's some major UI regression with Australis, I ain't seeing it - I toggle with the menu/title/bookmarks bar settings but can't say I miss the status bar. But I'm not a heavy theme/add-on user, so may I don't appreciate what I've supposedly lost in transitioning away from XUL.
Seems like there's been an awful lot of hate exploding against the Mozilla folks lately, and it seems that a lot of it is politically motivated. Politics aside, there have certainly been missteps, but Firefox has worked well and I don't have much to complain about. I'm not especially happy about the recent bloat (I've never once used Pocket, for instance), but at least it has stayed out of my way.
Well, what do I switch to, then, haters? Do you have a better solution? I need a browser that offers this:
* A rich selection of add-ons (adblock and script controls are security features these days, and there are other useful extensions I use)
* Cross-platform (I use Windows, Linux desktops, and Android)
* Open source (even if I never have occasion to build or modify the browser, I want to be able to)
* Address bar is separate from the search bar (when I type in an intranet URL, I don't want a search query going out, FFS)
* Performs well enough for me (I've never seen the horrible performance that some people allege)
If someone comes up with something significantly better and offers all of the above, I'd consider giving it a try, but for now I'll stick with Firefox.
As for Thunderbird, I'm glad to see it being picked up... yes it works, but there are a few things that have long needed fixing (like the mystery progress bar on IMAP accounts).
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
It is NOW but Eudora used to be a real awesome mail client with no relation to Netscape Mail. I used the hell out of it on my 68K Macs back in the old days. Was great, even on a 25MHz 68030 with 32MB of RAM.
^ This!!
I have been using Owncloud for a couple of years, it works so well across different platforms due to the Caldav/Carddav standards.
I initially just wanted a local provider for my contact and calendar sync since moving away from GAPPS but quickly realised it is a full replacement for googles syncing services.
When was the last time you didn't have a browser window open? For me, maybe 2002. No need to use a bookmark either, just type the first couple letters of the domain in the address bar and let it autocomplete.
Personally I use both webmail and kmail though -- the former for personal use and the latter for work.
This space intentionally left blank
Kmail is a very good email client if you use KDE.
When was the last time you didn't have a browser window open?
About the same time I didn't have my email client open. (Usually for the first few seconds after a reboot.) So yeah, they're both open about 100% of the time. so the advantage goes to the mail client, becuase its easier to find mail windows; since they're a separate icon and group on the dock/taskbars.
No need to use a bookmark either, just type the first couple letters of the domain in the address bar and let it autocomplete.
True, but that's not "faster".
As far as I can tell, it's fine. It's not buggy and all the features I want to use work.
So what you're saying it needs a ground up re-design with new features and some 3rd party shit added in because the users are unhappy?
Thanks for the advice. We always strive to listen to our customers to deliver the best possible product.
Sincerely
Mozilla Management.
What do you do when you leave the house? Do you have a world accessible resolver? VPN tunnel just to block adds? Sounds like a case of diminishing returns
The big deal for me is that since version 2.0 or so, Firefox has had major memory management issues, mostly pauses that last for several seconds at a time, and they have only gotten worse. Using Firefox's built-in profiler, the culprit of the pauses and sluggish performance is due to non-incremental garbage collection when the browser is using a lot of memory, almost all of which is used by the Javascript heap. This persists even when there's no plugins or extensions installed, and is worse on some web sites than others. I browse DeviantArt a lot -- 5 minutes on that site quickly pushes Firefox memory usage beyond 1.5GB, and reduces it to a pile of goo.
Palemoon doesn't have these performance problems. I use Firefox for development, and Palemoon for surfing.
It would be nice if the Firefox developers would stop ignoring complaints about this problem and stop constantly blaming plugins. Everybody knows it's not due to plugins or extensions.
I use Sylpheed. It's light and fast and doesn't do anything I don't need. However, in truth, nowadays I mostly use Gmail web interface.
Used to use Evolution at work. It's okay too. If I remember correctly, it did something business-related (calendars?) better than Thunderbird circa '10. This is probably no longer relevant
Claws Mail is what I have been using for years.
It's a fork of Sylpheed, with many good plugins.
IMAP-support has really improved the last few years. The team that works on it are quite nice guys.
There is a Windows port, but I haven't used that in a while.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
That is too much of a blanket statement to deserve a +5 Informative.
Most HTML in an e-mail is completely safe: a bold tag isn't going to steal your personal information. Save for exploits of the rendering engine, the bits that do not execute code or retrieve external resources (images) are all fine. Thunderbird has (and other clients have) solutions for the rest.
To be fair to both, I use them both interchangeably for most things. Same plugins/extensions/whatever. They both render the same, and both seem about as speedy as one another.
But Firefox (Palemoon) has been failing to handle streaming porn properly for me lately, so I tend to stay in Chrome.
*shrug*
Kid-proof tablet..
Chrome usage rocketed because it's so much faster than Firefox, and by having a separate task for each thread doesn't crash or grind to a near halt nearly as often. The extension architecture is a lot more robust too. I think a lot of Firefox's problems are actually just bad extensions, and the first advice they always give is try creating a new extension-free profile.
Mozilla realized that one task per tab, properly sandboxed plug-ins and ditching the old extension API was going to be both extremely difficult and extremely disruptive. So they started work on it slowly, and in the mean time mucked about with the UI and tuned up the Javascript engine to try to maintain market share. It backfired terribly.
I can't really see how they can recover. When they fix the extension API it will piss a lot of their remaining users off. That's a necessary step to get one task per tab and sandboxing. Then they will just be an inferior version of Chrome anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The binary part of Lightning is being rewritten in JS and nearing a testing phase. Part of the goal is to address thie issues you mention.
I'm naturally quite a private person, and I am very careful about what I do and say with other technology as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, ownCloud is the sort of thing I was talking about, though that particular example is a little heavyweight for my current needs.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Lets go the whole hog and fork Firefox at the same time.
I have already moved to Firefox ESR because I can't stand the way the upstream version is going. The Seamonkey project would also benefit, they are going to be screwed once FF and TB diverge.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
If Firefox and Thunderbird are incompatible with each other, where does that leave Seamonkey? A Firefox fork - possibly starting from Firefox ESR - would be the way to go if it got sufficient resources.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
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.
What you say is true. I'm a professional software engineer. If one of those two organizations take control of Thunderbird (TB), I think I'll get involved somehow to help keep TB alive. One thing I'd help with is migrate JavaScript out of the app. Fun.
Yeah, "palemoon" sounds great. I really want to trust people who name their browser "palemoon". Maybe they could take on thunderbird and rename it "palemail". That would be brilliant. It just sounds so good.
Either that or the geniuses that rebranded "ice weasel" could take it and rebrand it "weasel words". So many good options from brilliant FOSS product namers.
So you are judging an entire software program entirely on what its name is? Its name. Entirely? I suspect you live next to The Shallow River. "The internet... ain't it something."
I've used owncloud calendar/contacts/filestore for years. CalDAV and CardDAV syncs contacts and calendar to Thunderbird and to my android phone. I get synced files/contacts/calendar all WITHOUT Google.
Even wrote up complete instructions in my blog for those needing a hand.
Through in Let's Encrypt for cert services and I have a personal cloud with SSL support that works with TBird and all my family phones.
That's a strange claim, since Firefox was around first. Also Firefox maintains it's own certificate store, while Chrome uses IE's. This can be useful for troubleshooting cert issues.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That's an odd claim since Firefox came before. Also, FF maintains its own certificate store whereas Chrome uses IE's. Useful for troubleshooting cert issues.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
...which I consider to be a good thing, having witnessed what improvements have been added to the once clean and useful Firefox UI.
Because AT&T for some reason won't let me have access to their core routers.
Yes, I even tried asking nicely.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Happy T-bird user for years. Best there is.
Thunderbird is the best and most unique and useful thing they do. Firefox has unfortunately become an also-ran. If anyone at Mozilla is listening, that is.
Go-to email client back when I used a client. Ever since I started running my own mail server, found it much easier to just use a webmail client (Roundcube). And have been forced into Outlook (webmail) for work so, unfortunately there's not much of a place for it these days as far as my use goes. Wasn't a bad application though, and definitely would use it under any other circumstance. Would be interesting to see it leave Mozilla.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that one before.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Concur! TBird works great in a mixed W$ /*Nix set up.
Regards Eion MacDonald
Common interface. Keeping the email addresses separated but in one client as TBird does is great. I work for 4 companies each with its own email address for me and of course my own company and private emails. TBird keeps all in line. I am a fan. Just like student above, except I have been doing this on M$ and *nix boxes for a long time as I am 6 decades past student days,
Regards Eion MacDonald
Chrome usage rocketed because it's so much faster than Firefox, and by having a separate task for each thread doesn't crash or grind to a near halt nearly as often.
In my usage I haven't really noticed much difference in speed, but I don't use Chromium for much other than YouTube (to get HD) so my experience is limited.
The extension architecture is a lot more robust too. I think a lot of Firefox's problems are actually just bad extensions, and the first advice they always give is try creating a new extension-free profile.
That's one area that I thought Firefox was still king - in the extensions / add-ons area. How do you come to the conclusion that Chrome is better? I'd be happy to be informed if I'm wrong.
Mozilla realized that one task per tab, properly sandboxed plug-ins and ditching the old extension API was going to be both extremely difficult and extremely disruptive. So they started work on it slowly, and in the mean time mucked about with the UI and tuned up the Javascript engine to try to maintain market share. It backfired terribly.
I can't really see how they can recover. When they fix the extension API it will piss a lot of their remaining users off. That's a necessary step to get one task per tab and sandboxing. Then they will just be an inferior version of Chrome anyway.
Yes, it's a good idea to go to the separate process per tab, and you're quite correct that it'll break some of the main features that keep users using Firefox. It's a bleak outlook, and I, for one, hope they can recover some market share in the near future.
Not sure how they can pull it off, but they have smarter people than me working for them, so I wish them well.
If the 7% usage figure are true, nevermind the debate about it being much higher on desktops/laptops : a lazy guess tells there are about 100 million users. That's a nice niche.
If extensions get more limited - although still covering e.g. ublock - then why still use it you ask?
Why use Winamp instead of Windows Media Player to play music in playlists? Because I like it better. (In the years before it'd be more likely I'd use Audacious or deadbeef)
I will likely still use Firefox even if it gets chromified. I expect it to still come with a File Edit View... menu bar and a better GUI overall.
Webmail has worked for the last 15 years although it isn't always great (euphemism)
I guess I would like an off-line email client that you use through a web interface. Ha!
I would certainly deeply appreciate an email client other than Outlook!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
That's one area that I thought Firefox was still king - in the extensions / add-ons area. How do you come to the conclusion that Chrome is better? I'd be happy to be informed if I'm wrong.
Firefox extensions are very powerful, but that's actually the problem too. They are highly insecure and impossible to sandbox like Chrome extensions are. They are also mostly incompatible with one-process-per-tab too. That's why Mozilla is ditching them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Are you one of the self-centered delusional Mozilla managers that totally lost any connection to reality paired with arrogance and an unhealthy ignorance towards users? TB is used by quite many for a very long time and is rather popular as it is one of the few open source email clients that work right. TB has one major issue, it cannot share a profile across multiple systems. That was a complaint voiced half a decade ago by so many and in typical Mozilla fashion it got totally ignored. Instead we get UI redesigns that have zero value. Slapping more icons in a tool strip is easier I guess.
The new home should be with the document foundation. Integrating TB with LO will be awesome and I expect the folks at TDF to be more interested in building something people want to use as well as have more technical skill to fix the fundamental issues such as lack of sharing a profile across systems and inability to connect to an Exchange server out of the box. Include Lightning as personal calendar and add a shared calendar and we have a great alternative to MSO in the enterprise.
you never heard of false positive?
Indeed. And unless you absolutely insist on it, no problems with email-malware (something could possibly be done with Wine to be "compatible" to email malware... ;-)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Palemoon has a mail client of its own similar to Thunderbird (probably forked from it) called Fossa., which, like Palemoon itself, uses Goanna, their Gecko forked rendering engine.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."