Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#311

Post by EdiX » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #264

oneJob wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Facebook forces a user to opt-out it's acceptable to denounce their actions. How is the Pocket example different? One of my biggest, if not my biggest, complaint about the OSS community it the lack of sympathy toward non technical users. If I was a point-and-click, non-technical user do you think I'd have any clue what you meant by 'mailing list'? Not likely. And if I was that user what are the chances that I un…

I haven't seen any denouncing of Facebook in a long time, even though they keep getting worse every month. I assume it is because people accepted they are assholes, they won, they can't be replaced and that's that. And personally I consider the backlash against Pocket to be either undeserved kneejerk reactions, or a discreditation strategy sponsored by Mozilla's competition. Because seriously, why aren't we seeing th…

>Because seriously, why aren't we seeing the same backlash against Chrome

Because people who don't like the things you listed use firefox, not chrome.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#312

Post by cpach » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #94

Your link redirects people to a "no hotlinking" image when used directly. For those affected: if you find the page in Google by searching for "The CADT Model" it does let you see the content via that route.

Oops, sorry about that!

Here are two copies of the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20151126183335/https://www.jwz.o... | https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iPFEUf...

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#313

Post by cbhl » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

oneJob wrote: post #169

If this was an open source "project", rather than a "foundation" whose mission is to build a better web for its users, I'd say it was their call and that's the beauty of OSS. This is not that. This is another decision in a long string of decisions which are either not in their users' interest, questionable, or poorly communicated and implemented. If I were to give the benefit of the doubt here over the question of wh…

I think this is just a reaction to Firefox's rapidly declining market share. We've been through this cycle before, when MSIE and Windows were the dominant browser platform and Netscape Communicator hit a local maxima. It took a few years, but they came back, with Firefox.

Before we did a big transition from Desktop to Web; now a lot of people are shifting their focus from Web to Mobile. The Desktop never went away, and the Web won't either, but development there will likely stagnate. But unless Mozilla and Firefox reinvents itself for mobile, it will become mostly irrelevant, like DOS and Netscape and Opera.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#314

Post by nickpsecurity » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #308

nickpsecurity wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referring to architecture, algorithms, language features, etc obviously. They were all better on many machines from 1960's-1980's. Market kept rejecting anything that wasn't backward compatible with existing garbage and had max performance per dollar. So, dumb CPU's, COBOL, and C it is. :) Gave examples of what features old ones had in the essay below with the first link mentioning the specific systems for further in…

The modern equivalent to System/38, IBM's POWER hardware running IBM i still has the same benefits. I actually really like the concept and the way the ILE runtime works, but it's too bad that much of the platform is stuck with legacy design decisions and hasn't been modernized.

I agree with about everything you said. The System/38 design was one of the best cathedrals of old. Very forward-looking, thorough, consistent, and great for admins of the time. Still the only capability system bringing in revenue. Adapted pretty well to modern stuff but main OS's issues & stagnation hurt it as you said. I think the fact that it's pricey and proprietary kept the OSS innovation out, too.

However, the change to the AS/400 and POWER cost it one of its greatest features: hardware-enforced integrity at the object level. That's the feature that would still be giving hackers hell if it was widely deployed. The Intel i432 APX and i960MX had similar property. Interesting enough, IBM actually has secure CPU's they've prototyped and even sold to select customers. Would be great if they integrated one with IBM i at microcode, compiler, and OS levels. That plus an optional interface for new customers without legacy crap would be a huge differentiator that might give it new life.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#315

Post by tjohns » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

fl0wenol wrote: post #268

vdaniuk wrote: post #76

I've never been completely satisfied with Thunderbird and have tried to switch multiple times, reverting to web clients every time. Now I am using Nylas N1 built on electron(imagine that!) and it looks very promising. Also, arrogance of tech conservatives in every Mozilla or web tech thread on HN is becoming unbearable.

Do the web clients you've tried or N1 speak LDAP and support S/MIME with a local smart card reader?

N1 is still in the early stages of development. It's missing email aliases, for example. LDAP + S/MIME are definitely not implemented yet.

That said, the platform seems to have potential. I don't see any reason why these couldn't be implemented as plugins.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#316

Post by click170 » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

codelitt wrote: post #237

ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

I think a lot of people are forgetting that there is still a community developing it since Mozilla stopped "updating" it, beyond maintenance, in 2012. The product isn't dying, just will no longer be Mozilla backed. I assume that maintenance, like ongoing updates, will be passed to the community and hopefully another company steps up to back the project. Repo for Thunderbird: https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central

Thanks for highlighting the repo!

I too had heard development had stopped and misconstrued that to mean all development.

Now I'm wondering if there are any issues I might be able to help fix. I still use Thunderbird so if I can help keep it alive, I'd like to.

As parent pointed out, most of the alternatives are worse.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#317

Post by toyg » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #264

oneJob wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Facebook forces a user to opt-out it's acceptable to denounce their actions. How is the Pocket example different? One of my biggest, if not my biggest, complaint about the OSS community it the lack of sympathy toward non technical users. If I was a point-and-click, non-technical user do you think I'd have any clue what you meant by 'mailing list'? Not likely. And if I was that user what are the chances that I un…

I haven't seen any denouncing of Facebook in a long time, even though they keep getting worse every month. I assume it is because people accepted they are assholes, they won, they can't be replaced and that's that. And personally I consider the backlash against Pocket to be either undeserved kneejerk reactions, or a discreditation strategy sponsored by Mozilla's competition. Because seriously, why aren't we seeing th…

The difference is that Google and Facebook have always been commercial entities with a profit motive, they are not public utilities. Exactly because Mozilla is (supposed to be) something else, it's held to a higher standard by its users and donors.

> We could talk about [...] how Apple and Microsoft are blocking alternative browser engines

But we do. In a way, Mozilla is what it is because a lot of people were pissed off at MS.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#318

Post by dikaiosune » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

betteringred wrote: post #38

toyg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened before, with the transition from Mozilla Suite to Firefox. And let's be honest: XUL was just lipstick on the pig that is cross-platform development. HTML/CSS/JS are now fast enough to look like a slightly better pig, so here we go. Also, there's a generational shift underway. You and me could find crazy that people would openly choose to use IDEs built on HTML/CSS/JS, but that's what a lot of young folks…

I'm all for writing new apps in HTML, I think Atom and VSCode are awesome, but I'm not for rewriting huge legacy apps to be HTML apps for no good reason. The reasons given, that XUL requires maintenance that Mozilla engineers don't enjoy doing, is a joke considering the amount of effort to maintain XUL is less than 1% of the amount of effort to move Firefox to HTML. No one has listed the ten awesome features that we'…

It's worth pointing out that for a couple of years Mozilla has been building a replacement for their rendering engine (Servo), so I imagine that to some extent deprecating XUL now is preparation for not having to re-implement it for Servo. Just speculation.

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#319

Post by grinich » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:15 PM UTC

vdaniuk wrote: post #289

grinich wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the kind works about N1! (I work at Nylas.) Feel free to send us any feedback if you have ideas for how to improve the app. :)

N1 is a game changer for desktop clients and I'd love to contribute. What is the best place to send ideas concerning general product strategy? Tech feedbacks goes to github, obviously.

You can just write me directly :) mg@nylas.com

Re: Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

#320

Post by sundarurfriend » Tue, Dec 01, 2015, 6:16 PM UTC

jcurbo wrote: post #277

ultramancool wrote: post #195

I think this is the 3rd time I've heard Thunderbird is/is going to be unmaintained and that I should avoid it, but I'm yet to see a good alternative. Claws was crashy and didn't DPI scale properly on Windows, OS X Mail had strange behavior with my IMAP server and I just wanted a consistent UI with my Windows and Linux system. My next option is webmail but there's no good IMAP webmail client that seems to be able to h…

Thunderbird user for years here. I now use Postbox, which is (I believe) a commercial fork of Thunderbird. https://www.postbox-inc.com/

Postbox is pretty good, and would have been the solution to my mail client woes, except that:

* even after you've paid for the product, the only way to get support is to pay $10 for every question you want to ask, however basic or advanced it is - and you'll need support, because...

* there's erratic unpredictable behaviour at many places; is it some subtle bug in the software? or is it some weird about:config option that you have to set to get things working as expected? Who knows! If you're lucky, you'll find a solution in the Thunderbird forums that works. Often though, that dialog option has been removed from Postbox or that about:config option no longer does anything, and...

* the documentation is no help. It's no worse than the average startup's help pages, except in this case, as mentioned above, there's no support - so you'd expect that to be compensated with exhaustive documentation, but no such luck. The docs cover just the most basic cases and leave all the complex interactions of emailing to your own guesswork. Also...

* the devs avoid users like the plague. The only-paid-support thing is (explicitly stated as) a consequence of this, but this even extends to bug reports and feature requests - which are free of cost to submit, but the two bug reports (and one or two feature reqs) I submitted were met with only gaping silence. The interaction on Facebook and Twitter too seems limited to version announcements and rare one sentence replies.

I really wanted to like Postbox, for it to be the solution, because it was quite a good product with advanced capabilities and a quite reasonable cost. But it didn't seem like a reliable option for the long run given these limitations.