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Give to Thunderbird

give.thunderbird.net

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#121
After using TB for 10 years I uninstalled it half a year ago. Because of bad UI decisions and constant extension and PGP breakage. Got to a point where I froze the installation at version 68 just to be left alone. A security nightmare of course. In the end I trusted it less and less to not one day kill my e-mail archive going back 25 years. Also I still have PGP 2.6 encrypted e-mails that require IDEA/MD5 support. I know this scheme is insecure, but you can't disconnect me from my archive by no longer supporting those ancient formats.

Since I self-host e-mail anyway, I switched to a well-greased Roundcube web UI for desktop and FairEmail on the phone. Searching through 20 GB of mail, including text in PDF and Office formats, is more or less "Google-instant" thanks to dovecot-fts-xapian. Having everything in Maildirs for me is very pleasant.

For calendaring I now use Radicale and either Infcloud web UI on desktop or CalDAV-Sync on phone. Could be tighter integrated with e-mail but the old Unix ways of one tool for one job have merits, like all calendar entries are now file system objects and under Git control. Impossible now to fat-finger half the calender and having to jump through hoops to restore entries.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#122
post #81

I wouldn't use it anyway. But I would sponsor Firefox like this. However with Firefox you can only sponsor the Mozilla foundation and not the product itself.

I'd pay an annual subscription if it was supported and advanced like a real product. A viable alternative to chrome is worth money to me.

Me too. I wouldn't even want any extra features behind this paywall. The only perk I would like is some sort of weighted/priority feedback.

I do feel like Firefox needs to do its best to hold on to the existing power users, in addition to growing its casual user base. I feel like Firefox really disregards feedback from its biggest fans (i.e. the scheduled removal of compact view), and is overly focused on converting chrome users.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#123
post #22

too bad they dont support Caldav/carddav natively. I hate to rely on plugins for something that is so essential.

I've been using TbSync for the last couple of years, and CalDav works flawlessly for me.

Yeha, TBsync is a plugin. That's what I am talking about, it should be part of Thunderbird. Evolution and Kmail both include this by default.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#124
post #22

too bad they dont support Caldav/carddav natively. I hate to rely on plugins for something that is so essential.

Thunderbird is about to get native CardDAV support, currently available in Beta via Config mail.addr_book.useNewAddressBook set to true.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#125
post #112
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’ll be fine as long as the extension doesn’t steal data. The moment that happens, his job is on the line.

What happened to vetting sources? Beonex is Ben Bucksch, a Mozilla true believer who's been around since before Firefox even existed. The chances that it will suddenly turn into malware is about as likely a distro's coreutils package maintainer going rogue—and far less likely than the revolving door at Mozilla Corp leading to the Firefox product team deciding to do something untoward themselves.

Vetting sources is only basic due diligence. Auditing source code, infrastructure, and data storage is crucial regardless of how “prolific” the author is.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#126
post #125
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to vetting sources? Beonex is Ben Bucksch, a Mozilla true believer who's been around since before Firefox even existed. The chances that it will suddenly turn into malware is about as likely a distro's coreutils package maintainer going rogue—and far less likely than the revolving door at Mozilla Corp leading to the Firefox product team deciding to do something untoward themselves.

Vetting sources is only basic due diligence. Auditing source code, infrastructure, and data storage is crucial regardless of how “prolific” the author is.

> Vetting sources is only basic due diligence.

Right, which is my point.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#127
post #126
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vetting sources is only basic due diligence. Auditing source code, infrastructure, and data storage is crucial regardless of how “prolific” the author is.

> Vetting sources is only basic due diligence. Right, which is my point.

You’re saying this individual is more trustworthy than Mozilla, because of employee churn? There’s a bus factor of 1 vs N in this example.

I trust indie devs for lots of software, tools, and apps; but absolutely not an extension that reads my privileged communications.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#128

I pay for the Owl extension [0] which allows me to use my university's MS Exchange account with Thunderbird. I don't understand why Mozilla don't offer this themselves though, is it too complicated to put the effort in given the size of the userbase? Or is there some reason it has to be proprietary and they're against releasing proprietary software? I really appreciate Owl, but I'd much rather just pay Mozilla direct…

> I don't understand why Mozilla don't offer this themselves though, is it too complicated to put the effort in given the size of the userbase? That's the short answer to the question. A longer answer: the underlying Exchange protocol is another IMAP-level of complexity of protocol, and the IMAP protocol implementation in Thunderbird is itself running somewhere in the 50KLOC region. On top of that, the protocol itsel…

Thanks so much for your response, as well as your work on Thunderbird/MailNews! I’m pretty sure I must be using your code every day, it’s really appreciated.

That all makes sense, I think the reason my uni refuse to allow normal IMAP is because they’re trying to enforce 2FA-only access to their systems, which could become more common down the line.

Re: Give to Thunderbird

#129

If your company uses Office 365, these guys have a plugin that I think parses the HTML website to get your mail (and calendar!) into Thunderbird: https://www.beonex.com/owl/ Just this week I gave them 10 Euros for the addon because my company refuses to enable IMAP for Office 365. I'm not affiliated with them, but I've been using the Tbird addon for a few weeks and it works perfectly. The license is per-year, though…

The plugin works, but barely. I have to use it on the job. It does not for example deal with JS on the login page. If there is a JS "button" that has an event handler for clicks, you are screwed. Do not expect support from them. I once wrote them about this problem and their response was basically "Oh, that's unfortunate!" and that for a paid product. They are basically living off of people having few other choices, not, because their stuff was so high quality.
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