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Thunderbird in 2019

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#11

Post by StevePerkins »

nocman wrote: post #10
StevePerkins wrote: post #5

The last I heard from Thunderbird in 2018, the story was Mozilla making preparations to divest themselves from the project and spin it off to "the community" (a.k.a. Apache graveyard). This post makes it sound like the Thunderbird team has been growing within Mozilla during 2018, and is targeting another 75% headcount increase in 2019. I mean, that's awesome, as someone who wants there to be a viable desktop email cl…

It is still a separate project. Mozilla is just collecting donations for them: "While Thunderbird is now an independent project separate from Mozilla, Mozilla has agreed to collect donations on our behalf" ( quote above is from https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird?utm_source=tb_b... )

> "Our team grew considerably in 2018, to eight staff working full-time on Thunderbird. At the beginning of this year we are going to be adding as many as six new members to our team."

Who are these staff members working full-time for, then?

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#12

Post by icebraining »

StevePerkins wrote: post #11
nocman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still a separate project. Mozilla is just collecting donations for them: "While Thunderbird is now an independent project separate from Mozilla, Mozilla has agreed to collect donations on our behalf" ( quote above is from https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird?utm_source=tb_b... )

> " Our team grew considerably in 2018, to eight staff working full-time on Thunderbird. At the beginning of this year we are going to be adding as many as six new members to our team. " Who are these staff members working full-time for, then?

Contractors chosen by the Thunderbird Council (a group of volunteers from the community) and paid by third-party donations. Mozilla just serves as the fiscal intermediary.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#13

Post by pbhjpbhj »

hyper_reality wrote: post #3

It's good to hear that Thunderbird is getting more resources. One UI bug that I didn't see mentioned in the post though, and that shouldn't exist in 2019, is that Thunderbird loses the scroll position of a tab when changing tabs. I hope this will get fixed soon.

Lol, Thunderbird seemingly has plenty of major loss-of-data bugs (I lost all my archives recently; synced up to the server -- that bug seems to be several years old (but rare)).

I'd almost guarantee that your tab-scroll-position bug is fixed first. It seems to be the way of things.

Thunderbird seems incredibly janky to me (unstable and easy to break, rough around the edges). Maybe my experience is rare ... would love to see it become solid and fast.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#14

Post by shmerl »

I recently discovered this add-on:

* https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tbsyn...

* https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/eas-4...

An actual working atcivesync support for calendar and contacts.

With Exchange being still very pervasive in corporate environments, it's quite useful.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#15

Post by anuragsoni »

Really good to see Thunderbird getting some attention and a dedicated development team. I have to use Microsoft Exchange at work and Thunderbird (i'm on version 60) with a couple of plugins, has been the client that has worked best for me on linux.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#16

Post by amaccuish »

shmerl wrote: post #14

I recently discovered this add-on: * https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tbsyn... * https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/eas-4... An actual working atcivesync support for calendar and contacts. With Exchange being still very pervasive in corporate environments, it's quite useful.

Oh thank you! I really wish Thunderbird would support EAS/MAPI over HTTP/EWS. They're so widely used and it's irritating to have to use the memory hog that is Evolution.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#18

Post by neilsimp1 »

halfastack wrote: post #17

Thunderbird is, hands down, my most used desktop app, if we're not counting IDEs and editors. Definitely would recommend; Thunderbird is awesome.

Honestly, I thought I liked Outlook on Windows until I gave Thunderbird a try. It's just so much faster.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#19

Post by RealDinosaur »

StevePerkins wrote: post #5

The last I heard from Thunderbird in 2018, the story was Mozilla making preparations to divest themselves from the project and spin it off to "the community" (a.k.a. Apache graveyard). This post makes it sound like the Thunderbird team has been growing within Mozilla during 2018, and is targeting another 75% headcount increase in 2019. I mean, that's awesome, as someone who wants there to be a viable desktop email cl…

The big problem I see is entrenchment... it's an app where nothing can change. They can't go ahead and just do a Chrome 69 with it.

What I would love to see is a small team in Mozilla create a spin-off Electron app, and do it well. Electron has a bad rap, but it's mostly due to being misused. Electron can be used well (VS Code for example).

Mozilla LightningBird for example. I could get on board with that. Heck, I'd probably help out.

Edit: Jeeze! You guys sure hate Electron. Just because a tool is misused so often, doesn't mean it's a bad tool.

Re: Thunderbird in 2019

#20

Post by superkuh »

RealDinosaur wrote: post #19
StevePerkins wrote: post #5

The last I heard from Thunderbird in 2018, the story was Mozilla making preparations to divest themselves from the project and spin it off to "the community" (a.k.a. Apache graveyard). This post makes it sound like the Thunderbird team has been growing within Mozilla during 2018, and is targeting another 75% headcount increase in 2019. I mean, that's awesome, as someone who wants there to be a viable desktop email cl…

The big problem I see is entrenchment... it's an app where nothing can change. They can't go ahead and just do a Chrome 69 with it. What I would love to see is a small team in Mozilla create a spin-off Electron app, and do it well. Electron has a bad rap, but it's mostly due to being misused. Electron can be used well (VS Code for example). Mozilla LightningBird for example. I could get on board with that. Heck, I'd…

I use Thunderbird because it is an application. If it became a Javascript app I and many others would surely switch to some other application.
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