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Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

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Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#101

Post by samastur »

epicide wrote: post #87
bhauer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was apprehensive of your comment at first since you start with fierce criticism of Mozilla. But on reflection, I concur that regardless of the high esteem I have for Mozilla generally, it is disconcerting how little attention Thunderbird sees despite its regular use by so many people. I've never agreed with the neglect it has received from Mozilla and, in fact, feel that Mozilla is missing an opportunity to help re…

Most people use personal email for newsletters and when they forgot their password. In the professional world, you either use some form of webmail or Outlook.

And here I was thinking I have been a professional developer for last 2 decades. But since I only touched Outlook at the very beginning of my career and still use webmail rarely, I guess I was only fooling myself ;)

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#102

Post by topspin »

martinald wrote: post #26

I have to say I think Mozilla is a complete shambles of an organisation. It must be one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. I can't actually believe this is something they're excited to post a blog about. Charity with 9 figures revenue is hiring a developer (finally) to work on a product which has 25 million users. I think Mozilla's…

I too believe they are neglecting a significant user base. Thunderbird could be a rock star product for Mozilla with many times more users (if not revenue.) It is very useful now, but the potential is immense.

So why is it being neglected? There is some history here; way back when Netscape was a kitchen sink, factoring the mail client out of the browser was an important and successful decision. The mail part, Thunderbird, became persona non grata for some; it certainly lost the bulk of the mind share to the browser.

However, I think the ongoing indifference is because there isn't a workable business model. Firefox is an advertising platform from which Mozilla earns hundreds of millions. It isn't clear how Thunderbird is supposed to earn.

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#105

Post by buovjaga »

lucideer wrote: post #55
mconley wrote: post #47

This title is inaccurate. Mozilla is _not_ hiring a developer to work on Thunderbird full-time. See below: From the post: " The Thunderbird Project is hiring for a software engineer! ... Please note that while the Thunderbird project is a group of individuals separate from the Mozilla Foundation that works to further the Thunderbird email client, the Mozilla Foundation is the Project’s fiscal home. The Thunderbird Co…

Do I understand correctly by interpreting that to mean: "Mozilla is allocating funding to The Thunderbird Project to hire a developer to work on Mozilla Thunderbird" i.e. the distinction is only relevant in terms of the direction of day-to-day work on the project. Or are Mozilla not funding this at all? The following quotes seem to indicate that the distinction isn't really relevant in the context of the hiring proce…

No, the funds are Thunderbird's alone, originating from donations. Mozilla Foundation is just their fiscal home. Thunderbird Council went shopping for a new fiscal home for a while, even considering The Document Foundation, but decided to stay with MoFo: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/05/thunderbirds-fu...

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#106

Post by carussell »

dlandis wrote: post #88
carussell wrote: post #4

The most important thing here is that there's now a serious plan in place to move Thunderbird off of XUL and XPCOM. If Thunderbird builds can happen without incurring the expense of building Gecko (and there's no reason that shouldn't be the ultimate goal), then community contributions in the form of code changes would likely increase several times over.

> The most important thing here is that there's now a serious plan in place to move Thunderbird off of XUL and XPCOM. Well it is only a six month contract for a single developer.

Sure, but the big thing is the "serious" part. We're basically talking about the patch paradox[1]. At any point in time, someone could have stepped up and made it known they were willing to do the necessary work to move off XUL. But without a similar commitment from upstream to accept a future involving a mail client built on web standard tech, it would be a wasted effort. Heck, Nylas even built their own such email client, relicensed it to a compatible license (GPL -> MIT), reached out to say, "please use this" and ask how they could help, and still nothing happened.

1. https://www.colbyrussell.com/2017/08/06/contributors-dilemma...

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#107

Post by buovjaga »

jordigh wrote: post #56
tkone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mozilla foundation is also a registered 501(c)(3). Is Mailpile? I don't see anything about that on your page?

No, Mailpile isn't a charity. But the Mozilla foundation isn't the one fronting money for this job, is it? Doesn't that money come from the Mozilla Corporation? Hm, the job ad says that MoFo is the fiscal home, but the candidate will be hired via UpWork. I'm really a bit confused about how money flows around Mozilla.

The money does not come from Corp, TB is moving away from Corp infrastructure. The money comes from donations: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/05/thunderbirds-fu...

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#108

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bad_user wrote: post #60
martinald wrote: post #26

I have to say I think Mozilla is a complete shambles of an organisation. It must be one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. I can't actually believe this is something they're excited to post a blog about. Charity with 9 figures revenue is hiring a developer (finally) to work on a product which has 25 million users. I think Mozilla's…

Your comment is incredibly mean. Mozilla isn't competing with other "charities", they are competing with Google, Apple and Microsoft, the world's largest corporations. The Mozilla Foundation might be a not-for-profit corporation, but they have the same constraints as normal businesses ... they have to secure reliable sources of funding, they have to preserve their resources, they have to be smart about investments, t…

Perhaps that's the problem. Why are they "competing". Surely the facts of being a charitable organisation should make their focus working for the charitable aims rather than competing with anyone.

>The current Thunderbird is terrible. //

What cross-platform desktop clients are better [I note MailMate is Mac only]. I use a mix of webmail (Outlook, Horde on private server), and Thunderbird (connecting to IMAP accounts) and can't say it's that different an experience for me; it does seem very sub-optimal however.

How many full time devs work on TB?

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#109

Post by buovjaga »

aniket_ray wrote: post #13

>The successful applicant will be hired as freelancer (independent contractor) through the Mozilla Foundation’s third-party service Upwork (www.upwork.com). Not knowing much about Mozilla, is this the norm there?

It is the norm for the Foundation, yes. I was thinking of writing to them to let them know about the shady practices of Upwork, discussed in this blog post https://medium.com/@AdShadlabs/why-you-should-never-use-upwo... and its HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282

Looks like there was a downside to staying with MoFo after all.

Re: Mozilla Is Hiring a Developer to Work on Thunderbird Full-Time

#110

Post by epicide »

samastur wrote: post #101
epicide wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people use personal email for newsletters and when they forgot their password. In the professional world, you either use some form of webmail or Outlook.

And here I was thinking I have been a professional developer for last 2 decades. But since I only touched Outlook at the very beginning of my career and still use webmail rarely, I guess I was only fooling myself ;)

Not all professionals are developers.
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