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Betterbird: a fine-tuned version of Mozilla Thunderbird

betterbird.eu

31–40 of 241 posts

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

#31

Does anyone know how to have a portable setup (all email IMAP preconfigured + settings) in either Thunderbird or Betterbird? So I can let Dropbox/something sync or symlink and hop between computers.

Hey, wow, I never thought of that. I am using Dropbox to sync my documents and all kind of stuff between computers. Also some configs. But not anything mail related, as it's anyways on imap (or gmail for some).

How would you setup that? Is that even supported by Thunderbird?

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

#32
post #4

There was another venture that was building a mail client off the Thunderbird codebase. https://www.postbox-inc.com/

Very happy user of Postbox here, and I find it very cheap for how mission critical it is to what I do.

I wish it had built-in support for an editable message Priority column (with icons like Eudora used to have), but I've managed to add that in myself with a version of H.Ogi's Priority Switcher extension that I edited myself to work with Postbox 7.

I understand some won't like Postbox because it is a proprietary/commercial fork and doesn't have a Linux version. But I wish Thunderbird was up to the quality standard of Postbox.

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

#33
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 i…

> the ffmpeg mainline went moribund

Never. FFmpeg was actively rebase-merging Libav changes, but not vice-versa. Libav devs wanted to focus on API clean-up and harmonization, FFmpeg usually prioritized new features. Major Libav dev activity more or less died by 2017.

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

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why was banned?

My guess was over something like this communication: https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.bette... Guy seems like a bit of a dick but I suppose after quite a few years trying to effect change in an org most people get that way.

That seems very harmless.

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

#35

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?

Thunderbird can change this setting per message as well. In one of the menus (maybe Tools or Options or something, I can't remember), under Delivery Format.

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

#36
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 i…

> 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.

No, that’s not what happened with ffmpeg.

Multiple developers forked ffmpeg in a somewhat abrasive way because they disagreed with the rest of the team. They wanted to focus on cleaning the code and changing the api while others wanted to keep working on adding features.

Debian switched because the ffmpeg maintainer was part of the group. Sadly for the fork the mainline was very much more reactive and pragmatic than them. Ffmpeg kept merging all the good changes they made while they mostly refused to use ffmpeg code. Then a security auditor found that ffmpeg was good at fixing bugs while the fork did a poor job and that was the end of it. The fork was abandoned.

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

#37
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 email reprinted in that PDF makes me irrationally angry to read. I hope there's an ebuild for Betterbird soon, because after reading that I'm not sure I want anything to do with Thunderbird anymore. Quote:

> * No interaction with any of the people involved. This includes

> o No interactions with Thunderbird community members, paid contributors, and Thunderbird Council members.

> o No interactions in any official Thunderbird channels, as well as external or unofficial channels like social media (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram).

You know what that is? That's fucking weaponized shunning. You know, like cults do. If this tells me one thing, it's that if I ever run an opensource project, I need to push back aggressively against any attempts to impose a code of conduct or found a council; such organizations seem to routinely attract terrible people.

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

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why was banned?

My guess was over something like this communication: https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.bette... Guy seems like a bit of a dick but I suppose after quite a few years trying to effect change in an org most people get that way.

Don’t see anything wrong with this post and he’s definitely not a „dick“ here. Criticism is not the same as negativity.

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

#39
In all seriousness... given what I've gone through with the behavior of many Mozilla devs, it's hard to wrap my head around what it would take to be "banned for life." That organization's tolerance for poor, unprofessional, and often abusive behavior from devs is extraordinarily high.

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

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why was banned?

My guess was over something like this communication: https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.bette... Guy seems like a bit of a dick but I suppose after quite a few years trying to effect change in an org most people get that way.

If this is the worst, this speaks a lot more about the Thunderbird project leaders than about this person.

I read this as a thoughtful, passionate, plea for project (governance) improvements. You can certainly disagree with him (I don't enough much about the project to judge either way, although his arguments ring true to my general software development instincts), but he was not attacking anyone or being a jerk.

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