Email Call to Action

July 25th, 2007

Do you think email is important part of Internet life? Are you interested in seeing something interesting and exciting happen in the mail space? Believe that Thunderbird provides a much-needed option for open source email alternatives and want to see it get more attention on its own? Long to see something more innovative than Thunderbird in the mail space happen?

So does Mozilla.

Are you someone who could contribute to such an effort? Do you have expertise and a desire to be involved in an innovative mail effort and/or a focused Thunderbird effort? If so, Mozilla would like to hear from you.

Thunderbird

Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation. The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn’t focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus — delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services — is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.

We have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.

Mozilla is exploring the options for an organization specifically focused on serving Thunderbird users. A separate organization focused on Thunderbird will both be able to move independently and will need to do so to deepen community and user involvement. We’re not yet sure what this organization will look like. We’ve thought about a few different options. I’ve described them below. If you’ve got a different idea please let us know.

Option 1: Create a new non-profit organization analogous to the Mozilla Foundation — a Thunderbird foundation. If it turns out Thunderbird generates a revenue model from the product as Firefox does, then a Thunderbird foundation could follow the Mozilla Foundation model and create a subsidiary.

This model probably offers the maximum independence for Thunderbird. But it is also the most organizationally complex. There is lots of overhead to create a new foundation, find good board members, recreate the administrative load. When we started the Mozilla Foundation Mitch Kapor, our-then business development lead and I spent a bunch of time on this work. The current Thunderbird developers don’t have this level of business assistance. If there is revenue that requires a subsidiary then the overhead goes up even further. There is serious concern that this will detract from serving Thunderbird users, since the core Thunderbird team is small and developer-focused.

Option 2: Create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird. This has less overhead, although it still requires a new company that serves the mission of the Mozilla Foundation. In this case the Mozilla Foundation board and personnel would remain involved in Thunderbird. Thunderbird would continue to need to be balanced and prioritized with Mozilla’s focus on delivering the web through Firefox, its ecosystem and the Open Web as the platform. The Thunderbird effort may therefore still end up with less focus and less flexibility.

Option 3: Thunderbird is released as a community project much like SeaMonkey, and a small independent services and consulting company is formed by the Thunderbird developers to continue development and care for Thunderbird users. Many open source projects use this model, it could be simpler and more effective than a Mozilla Foundation subsidiary. However, creating this as a non-profit would be extremely difficult. Running a services company as an independent taxable company is the simplest operational answer. We would need to figure out how such a company relates to the Thunderbird product itself. What’s the best way for such a company to release a product? How does that relate to the community project that stays within Mozilla?

We don’t know the best answer yet. And we don’t expect to without a broad public discussion and involvement, which we hope this message will trigger. Today someone suggested to me that perhaps there is another foundation that might be a good home for Thunderbird. I hadn’t thought of this; it’s a creative idea.

If you’ve got thoughts or — even better — want to get involved, please let us know. Some suggestions for making sure Mozilla is aware of your comments are at the end of this post.

Broader Mail Initiative

We would also like to find contributors committed to creating and implementing a new vision of mail. We would like to have a roadmap that brings wild innovation, increasing richness and fundamental improvements to mail. And equally importantly, we would like to find people with relevant expertise who would join with Mozilla to make something happen.

If we can see a path to an innovative mail initiative in addition to supporting existing Thunderbird users, then we are interested in doing so. If we find the best way to improve mail is incremental development of Thunderbird as already planned, then we’ve learned something extremely valuable as well.

Mozilla has a range of resources — funds, code, etc. — that can be applied to this problem. We’re looking for people with expertise, vision and leadership capabilities. If you are such a person, or know of such people, please let us know.

Discussion

If you’re interested in these topics, let us know. The web is great at distributed discussions, let’s see what we think about mail. I’ll moderate comments and trackbacks here quickly. If you want to make absolutely sure that Mozilla can find your thoughts easily, feel free to leave a pointer to them here. There’s also a page for each discussion on the Mozillla wiki, although they require you to log-in to edit. So if you have a Mozilla wiki account or are willing to create one, you can find these pages at the locations below. Go to the “Discussion” tab at the top to add your thoughts or pointers back to your posts.

Thunderbird
Mail Initiative

Categories: Mozilla | Tags: e-mail, Thunderbird

188 comments for “Email Call to Action”

1
Mikael Odhage said on July 27th, 2007 at 7:08 am:

My profession is among other things to help develop organisation. I don’t have enough information to say anything wise on the organisation for TB. Instead I will ask for some features that I today miss in my TB.
1. A combination of desktop- and web based e-mail.
2. Easy synchronisation with handheld devises.
3. Integration with “snail-mail”. A worldwide service for delivering printed mail to physical addresses. Say, I live in Sweden and write a letter to someone without an e-mail address (or no-one that I know) in Buenos Aires. If I use my local Mail service for this, it will cost the service (printmail) and postage for airmail and take a week instead of a day. If I had an account on TB for such a service, TB could find the nearest printout-and-deliver-service, use that and in turn be charged by them.
2
Fini Alring said on July 27th, 2007 at 7:21 am:

I’m reclaiming my Inbox!

After reading tons of comments and ideas about tb on a few sites, I will crawl into my cave and make my own tb/email roadmap.
The target is clear, replace Outlook in the corp. zones. We need tb data to use the new db-layer, and we need sync and extensions to work like a dream.

I’ll be back!
3
sunnysardine said on July 27th, 2007 at 7:50 am:

Options:
1)Create a new non-profit organization analogous to the Mozilla Foundation – a Thunderbird foundation.
2)Create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird.
3)Thunderbird is released as a community project much like SeaMonkey.
4)None of the above, find other solutions.
Vote here: http://mozillathunderbird.blogspot.com/

Well, I don’t get the point why Mitchell Baker wanna open this discussion to the public in her blog, but I am rather sad to hear that through my RSS reader. Yesterday, I just suggested my girlfriend to use Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client in her office since she complained about her company SquirrelMail was a bad one.

After spending lots of time reading replies on her blog, I still cannot figure out WHY she as a CEO of the Mozilla Corporation wanna discuss this publicly. Shouldn’t she discuss it with people of Mozilla Corporation and come out with better solutions?

“However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it” says Mitchell in her blog, what those she mean enormous energy? I do not understand all that, there is too much of imaginations. Then she says “As a result, Mozilla doesn’t focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus – delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services – is the correct priority.” ah ha, now I got you, you said you convinced that Mozilla doesn’t focus on Thunderbird as much as Firefox, and you still won’t expect this to change in the future! Firefox is the ONLY priority!

So WHY she ask us to choose Thunderbird’s destiny instead of killing the pity bird herself? Maybe she should said: “We I have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny”.
4
Chris Barnes said on July 27th, 2007 at 8:38 am:

Ok, I’m going to come at this from a somewhat different perspective. Unlike some of you who seem to have “google hate” (something I find amazing), where I see the biggest need for the market is in a client which runs on the user’s local machine, but keeps it’s data **AND PROFILE SETTINGS** on a free, public server.

Note that I’m talking about more than just email here. A client for Email (accessing Gmail). A client for a Calendar app (nothing exists, but would be easy to intergrate into Google/Calendar. Another app for a full blown (outlook-like) Contacts list (probably ldap based) – nothing exists for this *anywhere*.

Personally, I like having separate, stand-alone clients that happen to “know about” each other – but if someone wants an integrated app (ala SeaMonkey) that is fine too.

Note that all of these client/server apps very well could have a revenue stream attached to them (as they are accessing google – or some other online provider). What is astounding to me is that noone else has thought of this..
5
Jeroen Roland said on July 27th, 2007 at 10:16 am:

When make Mozilla from Thunderbirth a realy
web browser email client connection to poort 80 and not more form pop3/smtp25 mail. I can with Firefox 2 (upload/ receive mail gmail but we i used Thunderbird all my poort are close form (Tele2 & versatel router modem). But we mozilla make Thunderbrith Gmail on poort 80: Internet i can read my email and i used thunderbrith!.
6
Ann Watson said on July 27th, 2007 at 11:17 am:

Sure Thunderbird should stand on its own, but the question is can it? I doubt donations would keep development going for long and how else do e-mail/newsreader clients generate cash? Sellingng ad space in your messages? Yuuuuck!
7
Pixelapes said on July 27th, 2007 at 1:06 pm:

Thunderbird may need a new nest?

It looks as though there could be some major changes ahead for Mozilla Thunderbird, the excellent open-source alternative to Outlook Express.
According to Mitchell Baker of the Mozilla Foundation there are discussions in progress regarding the future …
8
matt said on July 27th, 2007 at 2:19 pm:

Mitchell,

I have to agree with the spirit of Fr
9
Lynden said on July 27th, 2007 at 8:43 pm:

Well if there is any thing I can do to help just contact me. Oh and I will be blogging about this. I’ll think about it some more and then I will blog about it. But don’t worry I will provide a link back here.
10
Michael Koechling said on July 27th, 2007 at 10:39 pm:

Hey Mitchell,

we need an fast and lightwight E-Mail Application! It’s important for Mozilla to have both of applications; Internet and E-Mail.

Just split the Thunderbird Development from Firfox (work and release with it’s own release plan).
11
disciple said on July 28th, 2007 at 3:06 am:

… and kiss your *nix market goodbye.
12
Ben said on July 28th, 2007 at 3:42 am:

I don’t care what you do but thunderbird rocks, and as long as it exsists without ads and spyware i’ll be happy.
13
Drazen Gemic said on July 28th, 2007 at 6:11 am:

I’d be willing to pay some amount of money for Thunderbird. Thunderbird is important to me. I have a registered business and I need to keep my mail and mail from my customers. WebMail is not an option.

The most of my work is done on FreeBSD box, so I don’t use Outlook. Thunderbird is better, at least for me, than Evolution and Sylpheed. Yes, I’d be willing to pay for Thunderbird.

DG
14
Amigomr’s English Diary said on July 28th, 2007 at 6:48 am:

Think of Localization !

I have read Mitchell’s post. This is shocked me.
I think we should think localization for Thunderbir…
15
mick said on July 28th, 2007 at 9:00 am:

If you ask me this is the begging of the end for FF and what ever you say is not going to sway me from the fact that google had something to do with you dropping TB, you can rant and blog all you like saying they had nothing to do with it, sources tell me other wise. and No I wouldnt be willing to pay for TB just incase that question is put forth.
16
Sarah said on July 28th, 2007 at 9:33 am:

Thunderbird’s definitely worth fighting for. Do what is in its best interests.
17
Andre Natta said on July 28th, 2007 at 9:54 am:

I have been reading some of the entries above (some were getting repetitive, probably in the same way that mine will be) and have been thinking that you may be going about it all wrong in terms of not considering a fourth option.

We all currently enjoy the flexibility that Firefox gives us and some of us still need or want an offline alternative for our email, but thinking of a way to make Thunderbird a built in part of Firefox, providing the opportunity to use an offline application and calendar (with (hopefully) continued improvements to Lightning) would be an ideal situation for the future, unless I’m missing something.

If the future is contained in the browser, make it something unique and a real long term solution to our needs. The ability to see work on or offline, particularly in my case while starting a new online publication, is essential, though I spend a great deal of time checking my online accounts. Figure out a way to make it all one piece of software and you get the best of all worlds. You make all of us loyal Thunderbird users happy its still around in a more useful way while continuing to expand the Firefox brand.

It’s definitely worth considering.
18
Ray Harris said on July 28th, 2007 at 10:38 am:

Pls, do not do this.
19
suseconfig said on July 28th, 2007 at 11:01 am:

In my humble opinion, the decision to separate the development of Firefox and Thunderbird, one way or the other, seems very sound. Nowadays, a web browser has to fulfil two different tasks: (1) browsing the web and (2) supporting the use of webbased apps – online as well as offline. Firefox 3.0 promises to deliver support for offline use of webbased services, whereas Thunderbird vigorously competes against its webbased brethren. Using a lot of Firefox money to support the development of a traditional e-mail client, belonging to a dying breed of desktop apps, doesn’t make sense. The users of Firefox and Gmail and the users of Thunderbird don’t have very much in common, except the Mozilla brand. A separation of the development of Firefox and Thunderbird would give rise to a much stronger Mozilla brand, fully aligned with Web 2.0.
20
LC said on July 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am:

I think Mozilla officially dropping everything but Firefox is simply the end of Mozilla as “idea” of a community working for a new, better and open Web.
We are told Mozilla is just a company and Firefox is the product.
This company could kindly “sponsor” some community driven minor projects, like Seamonkey and now Thunderbird, until they don’t draw resources from the “mission”.
What “mission”?
I regret all the time I wasted these years in advocating Mozilla projects, the whole thing was a joke and I have been naive.
Me and all those silly guys at “SpreadFirefox”, those who bought the gadgets, put the banners on their blogs and so on.
Sad…
21
Chris Conn said on July 28th, 2007 at 11:25 am:

Thunderbird is an awesome email client. I’ll continue to use it as long as it’s around. I agree with other posters that the organization should concentrate on quality (fixing bugs) rather than all this great vision for the future stuff.

Wasn’t the goal in the first place to make independent quality products? Now it seems to be all about money and politics.
22
xenophobe said on July 28th, 2007 at 11:42 am:

This is SAD news.

I’ve been happily using the Netscape/Thunderbird mail application since the earliest days of the Communicator Suite.

I imagine there are a lot more users out there than you would image, and I for one would be extremely saddened to be forced to use another mail application after using this for nearly 10 years.
23
Emin said on July 28th, 2007 at 12:48 pm:

“I agree with a previous comment. Rename Mozilla Corp as Firefox Corp. First the Mozilla Suite, and now Thunderbird. Which is next?”

FireFox!

There are a lot of very bad people, which want to use FireFox for free… Oh… It’s so difficult to develop open sourse project…
24
Jaggs said on July 28th, 2007 at 2:59 pm:

Thunderbird is an awesome email client. Just keep it going, and eventually people will learn about it and start using it like they did with Firefox in the early days. It doesn’t need a whole lot of new feature development, just fix bugs and keep it a bit fresh here and there.
25
Bitterroot said on July 28th, 2007 at 3:11 pm:

So, what we’re seeing here is… Microsoft and Google win yet another battle in the war on our desktops – a war in which our *privacy* is the net casualty.

I’m using a dual-boot system, and finding that I’m spending more and more time in Linux. Evolution is an okay product, but I have preferred Thunderbird, and have been using Tbird cross-platform for the very reason that it *IS* cross-platform. I currently IMAP my windows client (from our own dedicated email server) and archive the important stuff on my Linux client.

This news has me rethinking my whole desktop strategy. Not that I’m about to abandon Linux – but I’m hardly going to invest any more time and devotion to an abandoned software effort.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty certain I won’t be the first rat off this sinking ship – or the last.

And DAMN that makes me angry!

The PC-based OS market (i.e., Microsoft) has never been so vulnerable as it is now, and the threatened loss of Thunderbird is yet another destabilizing factor. Apple with OS/X Leopard is in an unprecedented position to gain well-deserved market share from crusty old PC-jockeys like myself… But I’m betting their arrogance will prevent them from doing so – AGAIN.
26
W^L+ said on July 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm:

One of the reasons that people have not been as enthusiastic about TB is the idiotic choice to default to a single SMTP server / account. When your ISP gives you up to five e-mail accounts, in addition to other POP/IMAP accounts like GMail (and your workplace), you need for each INCOMING account (e.g., user1@example.com on pop.example.com) to be paired with its corresponding OUTGOING account (e.g., user1@example.com on smtp.example.com).

TB also needs to come with the calendar extension pre-installed, just because its competition isn’t generic old Outlook Express, it is the professional version of Outlook.

That said, I use TB, but it takes a lot of time to get it configured properly because of the above issues. There are people that I won’t recommend TB to, simply because they won’t put up with these glaring holes (and I don’t want to do it for them).
27
Istakozor said on July 28th, 2007 at 7:01 pm:

Just for the record: Thunderbird is not only a mail client, but a Usenet client as well. Unfortunately, the Usenet side has a lot of bugs and lacking features (binary combine and decode, yEnc, nzb support).
I’m unable to code, otherwise I’d gladly help (I just translated a few extensions), but I think that the MoFo has now the means to hire a developers specifically for this purpose. At least I hope so. I’d rather see Thunderbird as part of the MoFo, but with much more resources (devs, “marketing” etc.) Also, before considering a split, IMHO the SeaMonkey team should be asked about difficulties of a community driven project. They probably have interesting ideas on this.

And, please, don’t neglect the news client part of Thunderbird.
28
Phil said on July 28th, 2007 at 8:52 pm:

Looking at Mitchell’s message and comments, I think that all comments have exclusively focused on the Mozilla-drops-thunderbird part and mostly ignored the “Broader Mail Initiative” part.

I believe that Mozilla sees Thunderbird as a thing of the past. A good implementation of an old, tired concept.

I believe that Mozilla has already embarked –probably with Google– in the development of a new mail client concept far from the old POP paradigm. A combination of gmail and firefox3 with offline extensions.

Mozilla told us that the next Firefox frontier will be the support of offline work. Now, just add that to Google funding, the amazing Gmail success and MoFo’s glaring lack of interest for Thunderbird…

The direction is pretty clear, and pretty exciting too.

Let’s Thunderbird live its own life with the support of its many fans, and let’s focus on next gen e-mail!
29
dimensionsix dot net said on July 28th, 2007 at 10:14 pm:

The Forgotten Little Brother

There has been a lot of chatter and debate in the Mozilla development community of late over a recent decision by Mozilla’s powers-that-be that will see the development of Mozilla Thunderbird, the e-mail companion software to the (far) more popul…
30
Ryan said on July 28th, 2007 at 10:28 pm:

Thunderbird must live on. Arguably, Thunderbird is one of the best email apps ever! I want to see it keep it going!
31
suseconfig said on July 29th, 2007 at 12:59 am:

I fully agree with the resounding remarks on this blog about the quality of Thunderbird. Thunderbird is indeed a very capable e-mail client and, securitywise, it’s one of the best around. But all the remarks about the eminent quality of Thunderbird don’t address the problem. Since 2004 broadband connections and increasing online storage on webmail services have made the use of desktop e-mail clients superfluous, and people now in their teens or twenties couldn’t possibly care less about desktop dinosaurs like Thunderbird. The only Mozilla app that is all the rage is Firefox so it seems like a sensible decision that Mozilla Foundation is going to concentrate the attention on the development of Firefox, thereby cutting desktop dinosaurs like Thunderbird, Sunbird, and Lightning out of the equation.

A happy Firefox user, running openSUSE 10.2.
32
[[[CAM]]] said on July 29th, 2007 at 1:42 am:

Integrate Thunderbird in Firefox, that’s the solution.
33
Gate 303 said on July 29th, 2007 at 2:22 am:

Thunderbird kommer inte fortsätta vara ett Mozillaprojekt

Thunderbird kommer att sluta vara ett Mozillaprojekt, detta enligt Mozillas VD Mitchell Baker som skriver om detta i sin blogg. Exakt vad det innebär är än så länge lite svårt att avgöra. Det finns både risker och möjligheter med den uppkomna …
34
yanychar said on July 29th, 2007 at 3:21 am:

Right direction

I am not happy with Mozilla Corp. dropping of TB support. But this is a long expected step.

Mozilla is using the most complicated build system I can imagine. The “one tree many projects” mantra makes practically all ./configure options unreliable. In its current state, mozilla resembles a hydra with each head trying to push the body in its own direction. It needs clear priorities to keep on flying.

However, concerns are voiced about mozilla sustainability as a platform. If that also ceases to be a priority, I would expect an alternative line of development or fork to appear. For example, xulrunner is already an important part of Debian Linux. Like any good platform it is shipped as a number of packages, not a single one. And those packages have dozens of dependencies. In turn, many of the dependencies have fought their way into the set of programs installed by default. Developers, maintainers and users of these packages is a community with a potential to support possible fork.

Whatever Mozilla thinks of mail client, that kind of program is a must-have for any modern desktop operating system. Mozilla paved the way for GNU/Linux to workstations of normal users, Dell+Ubuntu is the brightest example. And there is no sign of retreat.

In short, if TB is let fly free to facilitate mozilla platform restructuring this is a good news. If to the contrary this is the step to promote gmail and drop platform support, we should see some strong resistance from OSS community.
35
leblase said on July 29th, 2007 at 3:42 am:

Please convince your hegemonic Google partners that a TB desktop or a TBmail included in FF is good for their “friendly” image, else FF goes down the drain.

TB could use some of Blackberry’s features, like visualization and push e-mail.
Gmail is great but too intrusive.

As for the organizational situation, how can one truly answer to you since one cannot believe you tell us all?
36
bdew said on July 29th, 2007 at 3:52 am:

Just rename yourself to googlefox foundation.
37
Robert said on July 29th, 2007 at 9:33 am:

I like Thunderbird and wish it the best as it tries to resolve any issues, problems, etc. Even if your using Linux you have a known email client
38
Zapy said on July 29th, 2007 at 10:19 am:

I haven’t read the all the comments but i say, start some kind of Global Donation Accounts, Paypal, Paynova, at a Bank with IABN-NR or similar make the money flow, i think it would be much appreciated to the Mozilla Foundation and the programmers.
39
bob said on July 29th, 2007 at 11:33 am:

Ok something that got missed in all the comments above is that biz are required to keep critical emails for seven years now that might have legal implications. A judge can hold you in contempt if you can not produce them. TB right now can archive said emails complete with headers you can burn to disk save to tape back out hell even print to hard copy, I do not know of one web based email that does this. I use TB over outlook because I switch to plain text view and don’t have to worry about some forwarded email executing code while I figure out if it is spam or legit email. I do not use firefox because there is way too much junk and less control on my end over what I load on my machine, I have enough head aches from fixing other glitches I want my email not to be the reason I don’t have the email anymore. I’ve noticed that while the spam filters have gotten better I get false positives now which is really bad. Also what was the point of changing label to tag? It seems like the efforts are getting spent in the wrong areas maybe? Last web based email clients have their place but you can not send a encrypted emails with them because the keys have no place to reside.
40
PK said on July 29th, 2007 at 3:30 pm:

There should not be a question about abandoning desktop mail because webmail is so powerful now (thanks to Google and others). The desktop mail has its niche that cannot be replaced by webmail. It is a matter of personal choice. It is a matter of organizational choice. It is a matter of business choice, at last.

Why I am using TB during last years and recommend it to enterprises:
– Because it is a good email client.
– Because it is the only valuable multiplatform desktop mail client.
– Because it is the only valuable alternative to Outlook at Windows platform.
– Because it is a part of Mozilla and it nicely fits with Firefox.

Dropping the TB from Mozilla mainstream will negatively impact an overall Mozilla acceptance in organizations.

Vision for the TB has been outlined in this blog in very good level of details.
Just a summary:
– Better calendar support => Multiplatform calendar solution
– Better syncml support => Multiplatform synchronization with handheld devices
– Better organization of information => Better desktop email processing
– Server-based configuration => Better enterprise/organization support

Regardless of the decision being made, I’d like to thank all the current and past TB developers. You are doing a great job by providing a great product that gives the world a chance to adopt a single free desktop email solution, and that competes with many commercial products. Please continue your work regardless of this post and further decisions.
41
Gensus said on July 29th, 2007 at 3:50 pm:

Sometimes, the obvious is overlooked.

If Thunderbird had more users, this whole problem would not exist.

Therefore, to get more users, Mozilla has to advertise TB more.

1) Put TB as a link in the Firefox menu.
2) Mention TB on the same page as the Firefox download

Right now, it is hard to find mention of TB on the firefox page. One has to go to the “other products” page.

This is so simple. Why don’t they do it?
42
Jon said on July 29th, 2007 at 4:26 pm:

So long as thunderbird development moves forward I think everyone will be happy. Personally I would like to see thunderbird remain a product of the mozilla corporation.
43
Erik said on July 29th, 2007 at 10:25 pm:

This really upsets me
44
BiSshop said on July 29th, 2007 at 11:24 pm:

Dear all,

Thunderbird can make the difference with other mail apps if it can alow the same functionalities and more…

I mean that you have to develop a calendar and task manager like OutZook. And I’m sure that you will take more part of the market if you are able to manage synch with PDA & mobile.

For sure those functionalities must be by default. Understand that could be hard for a non-specialist to download and install extensions.

An other idea is to use TB for RSS and Podcast publishing, think it!!!
45
suseconfig said on July 30th, 2007 at 1:11 am:

If Firefox 3.0 delivers on all the promises, it will easily be far ahead of the competition. Thunderbird, however, is a solid mail-client which cannot compete against Outlook due to the well known inertia of the enterprise as well as the lack of integrated calendaring (Lightning is a work in progress, i.e. not ready for the enterprise). And Thunderbird cannot compete against webbased e-mail services due to the proliferation of broadband connections and the increase in online storage on webbased e-mail services since 2004.
46
Bill Todd said on July 30th, 2007 at 3:10 am:

Firefox is a nice enough browser, but hardly irreplaceable from my viewpoint. In fact, the main thing keeping me from seriously considering Opera is the cultural compatibility that Firefox and Thunderbird share.

So if Thunderbird becomes obsolete, I’ll likely move to some other at least semi-integrated email/browser combination. For that matter, if Thunderbird had never existed I might not have moved off IE (sure, it’s a bit harder to keep buttoned down, but sitting behind a router we just don’t see most potential attacks – and since we still need IE for Windows Update anyway…).

Many a contemporary corporation has suffered from myopic attempts to ‘streamline’ its activities around a single ‘star’ product without realizing how much synergy perhaps less luminous associated products contributed to its success. That’s often false economy even in the commercial world: a non-profit has no excuse for it whatsoever.

Of course, that’s just one user’s opinion…
47
rschetterer said on July 30th, 2007 at 3:37 am:

Perhaps the only thing that went wrong with thunderbid is that your are still related in Mozilla/Thunderbird perhaps you should go to companies which like to see thunderbird getting stopped like apple/google/m$ cause mail ist a big market for them.
also your call for action ist totally nonsense how would you ever like to measure how many people
using thunderbird, so i call you to act more and invest more to thunderbird that it will be the all platform outlook killer app as it should be, include imap acl, sieve from open source libaries instead of playing new gadgets to firefox und code webmail stuff
48
schetterer said on July 30th, 2007 at 3:39 am:

Perhaps the only thing that went wrong with thunderbid is that your are still related in Mozilla/Thunderbird perhaps you should go to companies which like to see thunderbird getting stopped like apple/google/m$ cause mail ist a big market for them.
also your call for action ist totally nonsense how would you ever like to measure how many people
using thunderbird, so i call you to act more and invest more to thunderbird that it will be the all platform outlook killer app as it should be, include imap acl, sieve from open source libaries instead of playing new gadgets to firefox und code webmail stuff,
i advise everyone to use Thunderbird since it came out
49
JS said on July 30th, 2007 at 5:29 am:

You should keep Thunderbird, It is my primary e-mail client, works very well.

I think spinning it off would be a bad idea, and feel the project would go down hill due to less connection / more time to keep in patch with the FF code.

If your worried about lack of PIM features / having trouble with them, focus on adding them as mozilla corp created add-on vs integration in to the e-mail client.
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Oren Sreebny’s Weblog said on July 30th, 2007 at 6:41 am:

Mozilla, Thunderbird, and the future of email

There’s been a lot of discussion (much of it of the hand-wringing variety) of Mitchell Baker’s Email Call To Action blog post where she talks about Mozilla splitting off the development of the Thunderbird email client software to a new organization. In…