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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

#131

Post by kadotus »

flomo wrote: post #29

> Multi-line view like in Outlook, Lotus Notes and Postbox > Betterbird: Yes! > Thunderbird: No, requested since 2003 Wonderful! Back in the mid-2000s, this annoyed me enough to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook for work mail. Great to hear they had to fork the project to match the delicious UI of Lotus Notes. Honestly since then I haven't thought much about local PC mail clients to even consider any alternatives. A…

Finally coming to thunderbird too: https://www.askvg.com/thunderbird-to-get-multi-line-message-...

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

#132

Post by CJefferson »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #115
CJefferson wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen plenty of harassment which in principle insults code. It easy to say things like "Part X of the code base is a piece of ** and should be deleted", or "Recent PR 1234 is awful" -- no-one's name is mentioned, but everyone knows who is in charge of X, or who wrote PR 1234. In terms of "this sort of power", you are of course welcome to ignore them asking you to not tweet at them -- just don't expect to be allow…

It seems deeply unreasonable, infantilizing and arrogant to me. Different preferences, maybe. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from a religion. > I've seen plenty of harassment which in principle insults code. It easy to say things like "Part X of the code base is a piece of * and should be deleted", or "Recent PR 1234 is awful" -- no-one's name is mentioned, but everyone knows who is in charge of X, or who wrote PR…

To me, there is a huge difference between "negative feedback" -- I don't think any project is saying you can't reply something like "This PR should not be merged, because there are significant problems. For example, line Q causes a memory leak, and lines A-B are so complicated I can't figure out if there is a buffer overflow or not". If you have examples where this kind of factual complaints are causing people to get banned, let me know.

As a concrete example, I consider myself a reasonable coder -- I've contributed to a bunch of projects, including gcc. I've stopped contributing to projects (including gcc) because I got feedback which wasn't helpful, but was either hostile or at minimum extremely unhelpful. Did they want rid of me? Maybe so, but they certainly kept all the code I'd submitted, much of it to the current day.

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

#133

Post by throwoutway »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #37
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 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…

Maybe I missed something. it looks like this "ban" was only for three months (further down the PDF email thread).

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

#135

Post by throwoutway »

mort96 wrote: post #65
rjzzleep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Linus or countless others did with Linux eh and a bunch of other world class open source projects? This is the lie people like you keep purporting in those VC money firehoses that have no grounds in the real world.

Well, Linus himself did think that his behavior was a big enough issue that he took serious steps to do something about it, and is now a completely different person in mailing lists. But note that your parent comment said "almost always", not "always". The Linux project isn't exactly typical.

> Well, Linus himself did think that his behavior was a big enough issue that he took serious steps to do something about it, and is now a completely different person in mailing lists.

Sure, but as another counterpoint to OP, that was after two decades of producing value (not just Linux but also Git).

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

#136

Post by m4lvin »

fsiefken wrote: post #17

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?

I think the new feature is that Betterbird can send a HTML-only email, without any plain text version. Or can you do that in Thunderbird already?

(In my opinion, this is not a feature but a bug. HTML-only emails are evil.)

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

#138

Post by p4bl0 »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #112
p4bl0 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every wrongdoing to a community is illegal per se. The police has nothing to do with it. And concerning illegal things that the police could act on, the situation in real life is much more complex than you seem to think. First, a legal procedure can take time and as a collective you may want to protect the victims and your organization in the meantime. Second, you can encourage but never force a victim to go to t…

Right, then I believe you'll agree there's a difference between "the community" and "we who claim to speak for the community." At first look, this seems like the latter.

> I believe you'll agree there's a difference between "the community" and "we who claim to speak for the community."

Indeed.

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

#139

Post by danielheath »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #78
deredede wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same initial reaction as you but actually think that in such situations asking people not to interact with the members of the organization is appropriate. Sometimes people do need to be put in timeout, and I read this as a formal way of requesting the problematic user stays away from the community for a bit. Private interactions with members of the community, as well as interactions in other contexts (eg wo…

I mean, harassment is already against the Twitter ToS. I'm not sure of any social media site where it isn't. At some point, you have to assume that if a member doesn't want to be contacted, they're their own person enough to communicate that. Anyway, I understand why Mozilla would want to make a declaration like this. I just think the fact that they believed that this was a declaration that they could make, and have…

I mean... it's not a question of "I declared it, so you will do it". It's a question of "You broke the rules once; you can stay in timeout for a week or we can ban you entirely". Would you be bothered if they'd skipped the first part and just banned them from their gruop for making trouble?

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

#140

Post by FeepingCreature »

danielheath wrote: post #139
FeepingCreature wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, harassment is already against the Twitter ToS. I'm not sure of any social media site where it isn't. At some point, you have to assume that if a member doesn't want to be contacted, they're their own person enough to communicate that. Anyway, I understand why Mozilla would want to make a declaration like this. I just think the fact that they believed that this was a declaration that they could make, and have…

I mean... it's not a question of "I declared it, so you will do it". It's a question of "You broke the rules once; you can stay in timeout for a week or we can ban you entirely". Would you be bothered if they'd skipped the first part and just banned them from their gruop for making trouble?

I am fine with any judgment Mozilla make on infrastructure that they run and that belongs directly to the project, such as mailing lists, official chatrooms, etc. It's the addition of "unofficial" social platforms that irks me; it seems totalitarizing. Interaction of contributors outside the project ecosystem is none of their business.

I prefer for society to be sliced "horizontally", rather than "vertically". I am not aware of good terms for that. I want the arrangement to be that people can spend some of their time contributing to some group effort, with no impact on other efforts; rather than that people belong to groups, totally: "I contribute to Thunderbird" vs. "I am a Thunderbird developer."

The resigning of Brendan Eich violated that same rule as well. You work for Mozilla, then you go home and Mozilla drops out of your life. You are not a Mozilla employee unless you're on the clock. Only, what happened was that it turns out you can't be a Mozilla employee and a certain kind of Republican in the same person; the vertical isolation was violated. I think this is because people saw Brendan as "he is a Mozilla employee" rather than "he works at Mozilla." I am against that way of looking at people. I think it is important for the functioning of society that people can horizontally intermix rather than segregate.

A core part of the horizontal arrangement of society is that when you leave the boundary of a project, you leave its mores behind you; you are allowed to codeswitch as you context switch. Any rule that penalizes you for behavior elsewhere that violates the local rules directly threatens this.

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