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Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

betterbird.eu

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Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#11

Post by throwaway81523 »

kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

Did something like that happen with ffmpeg a few years back? A huge amount of the dev work was being done by one at-the-time abrasive guy. They booted him, he forked, the ffmpeg mainline went moribund while the fork line kept getting better. Apparently he is back with mainline now. I hope things are mended but I didn't pay attention.

As for Thunderbird: I use it, but it seems like its dev decisions are often wedged in rather basic ways. I have no idea how the decisions were made, but if you look at the support forum, there is a big disconnect between what the devs keep adding, and the existing pain points that users keep running into. I'd rather have a less featureful program where the dev effort went into eliminating user pain instead of adding more.

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#12

Post by Zardoz84 »

kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

why was banned?

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#14

Post by c0nducktr »

kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

> The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning

Can you describe what is concerning? I'm not going to look into email threads just because someone says there is something concerning there.

What are your concerns? I'm not here to defend them, but I am lazy. If there are concerns, what are they? I figure if they're concerning enough, they can be described in a few sentences.

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#15

Post by EbNar »

thro388 wrote: post #10
kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

Being banned from Mozilla is actually sort of endorsement for me :) I was worried this project is just repacked Thunderbird, with malware. This makes it more legit. Also some people do not like politics in Mozilla Corp. Firefox is supposed to be privacy focused, yet it uses Google for search, CEO salaries, scraping promising tech etc... I use Brave browser, created by a guy who was also banned from Mozilla, it works…

No post body was provided.

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#16

Post by runlevel1 »

kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

Brilliant jerks almost always have a net negative impact on a project when you factor in their adverse effects on their teammates.

The existence of a competing fork might be healthy, though. Having competition can make your priorities a lot clearer.

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#17

Post by fsiefken »

The feature comparison says that Thunderbird "Can only send plain text and HTML", but when I check the source of my outgoing mail it's sends it as plain text (Thunderbird client 102.2.2, not upgraded yet to 102.3). Perhaps the BetterBird feature is an extra per message inline option?

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#18

Post by Mathnerd314 »

kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

The main page on why he was banned: https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/former.html

Re: Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

#19

Post by concinds »

kayson wrote: post #5

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are…

The problem with open-source is that reaching responsibility or leadership positions requires as much office politics, or more, than normal corporate jobs. When a leader is incompetent, you can't talk to his boss, stirring up the community is the only way to cause change. But then you get accused of "lacking civility". Wikipedia is another example of this, where the Foundation is notorious for its flaws and for not caring about what the community thinks. "Respectful" criticism gets zero attention since people assume it must be minor, so you get backed into a corner of needing to "create some fuss" if you want to cause any change. I doubt you'll find any historical movements that actually impacted things and couldn't be called "abrasive," that's just needed to make up for power differentials.
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