Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 200 posts

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

#131

Post by lucideer »

buovjaga wrote: post #105
lucideer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Good to know. The post really isn't too transparent about this...

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

#132

Post by confounded »

izacus wrote: post #86
confounded wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop native clients will be in declining use, and Mozilla will know this. I handle most personal email on my phone, and corporate email increasingly requires MFA via a web-client, for which there is no standard for native clients. I have native desktop clients for email installed, and prefer them, but in reality I hardly ever use them. Thunderbird is a great project, but relative to other things Mozilla have their…

Well good thing your personal experience translates to all other 25 million people using Thunderbird.

We don't have data, but Mozilla probably do. In lieu we can only guess based on our experiences.

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

#133

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ronnier wrote: post #74
pmontra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes your experience unpleasant? My pain point is that dragging attachments to folders doesn't work in Linux. It's been an open bug since 2007 and I've lost hope on that. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mozilla-thunderbir... Everything else works as it should. I'm not using calendars or syncing address books which probably places me in the long tail of the user distribution.

It breaks the model that nearly every other email client uses where you can enter email1@example.com, email2@example.com, ... and instead it provides an input box, one per line, per email address. When you have a large to list, this gets painful.

Works for me, it doesn't then separate the emails graphically before sending but it does send them to the multiple addresses (the sent, and received messages can be opened as "Edit as new" and the addresses appear on separate lines).

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

#134

Post by pbhjpbhj »

shmerl wrote: post #45

I switched to Kmail around the time Mozilla said they stopped actively developing Thunderbird. Is it a change in their attitude?

Does Kmail have full support for sending html email yet? I stopped using it when the dev response to requests to add it was "email should be text only". Genuine question, I try to audition a new client each year, this year perhaps I'll give Kmail another go?

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

#135

Post by pbhjpbhj »

buovjaga wrote: post #107
jordigh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>The money comes from donations //

The money presumably came from selling FF users to Google but Mozilla Corp decided spending on TB was wasting money.

Whose driving this at Mozilla Corp? Seems like a sea-change to very money & business orientated position, like Mozilla's is basically being privatised and unprofitable (in the financial sense) parts are being ditched.

The "Key Issues" of the Mozilla Foundation (https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/foundation/issues/) appear to fit well with providing a FOSS email client, as otherwise people are going to go with Google/MS/Apple primarily which moves email in a way that contradicts the aims laid out there.

[Interesting that the Mozilla Foundation use Google for hosting files (eg https://mzl.la/foundation-strategy), seems a bit contradictory.]

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

#137

Post by pbhjpbhj »

buovjaga wrote: post #105
lucideer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Isn't it Upwork are hiring a programmer to work a contract for Thunderbird?

Incidentally there was a post that was heavily critical of Upwork but is now "dead", it included points like:

>Then they take a 2.75% cut from the client, a 20% cut from the freelancer //

It seemed, factual, apposite, and informed; definitely strange it was killed.

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

#138

Post by hobofan »

confounded wrote: post #77
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…

Desktop native clients will be in declining use, and Mozilla will know this. I handle most personal email on my phone, and corporate email increasingly requires MFA via a web-client, for which there is no standard for native clients. I have native desktop clients for email installed, and prefer them, but in reality I hardly ever use them. Thunderbird is a great project, but relative to other things Mozilla have their…

Who says that Thunderbird can't become a mobile app too? Given more developer power, of course.

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

#139

Post by pbhjpbhj »

aidenn0 wrote: post #111
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

IMO claws-mail is better than thunderbird for e-mail.

Any specific features you believe makes it better than TB?

First impressions aren't great -- is Claws an "email should be text only" advocate? -- brief look and the default mail format being non-standard; and all the screenshots on the website showing text only emails; tools including a special script to order threads by date (how else would you order them?); and the latest amendments to those scripts being over a year old; most recent theme links to a website that's offline.

...um, the downloads are from a server without a cert (cert is self-signed for a different domain; and their bugzilla is http only too), think that's a nope from me. Not because of the cert exactly but because not getting that write for a group that are supposed to be dealing in internet security seems like an indication of neglect.

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

#140

Post by hobofan »

macns wrote: post #33
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…

> one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. Care to elaborate? Genuinely interested.

Every year(?) all the big search engine providers make an $$$ offer to Mozilla to become the default search engine in Firefox for anyone who newly installs it.
Post reply on HN