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Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

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Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#121

Post by cycomanic »

bachmeier wrote: post #114
narag wrote: post #47

After reading a bunch of negative comments here, let me add a little on the bright side. I've been using Thunderbird for many years, currently both at home and at work to manage gmail accounts, pop at home, imap in the office. It works great for me, with a few annoyances but nothing serious. As for the donations, Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now, so I don't think much about specific org structur…

I've been using Thunderbird for decades, I've donated in the past, and am likely to donate again. With that out of the way, the lack of transparency as to what happens to my money kills the incentive to donate. "How will my gift be used?" "Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing develop…

I find that a weird sentiment. Why do people demand to know and control how every one of their donations goes, while nobody questions how corporations use their money. Ironically, the demand for this increased transparency significantly increases compliance cost, which means more and more money is driven away from the actual cause toward the administrative costs. Exactly what people don't want to support.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#123

Post by squigz »

account42 wrote: post #107

The other day I cam to my computer with Thunderbird showing me a full page screen instead of my email list that I had open before. Not going to donate to projects that disrespect users like that - my computer is not your advertising space even if you consider your ads "helpful information".

I think it's more disrespectful to judge so harshly a company - that puts out wonderful, free, open source software - asking for donations 1 or 2 times a year with a message that is easy to close.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#124

Post by sph »

bachmeier wrote: post #114
narag wrote: post #47

After reading a bunch of negative comments here, let me add a little on the bright side. I've been using Thunderbird for many years, currently both at home and at work to manage gmail accounts, pop at home, imap in the office. It works great for me, with a few annoyances but nothing serious. As for the donations, Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now, so I don't think much about specific org structur…

I've been using Thunderbird for decades, I've donated in the past, and am likely to donate again. With that out of the way, the lack of transparency as to what happens to my money kills the incentive to donate. "How will my gift be used?" "Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing develop…

> Your gift helps ensure it stays that way

Written this way, it sounds like "donate or we'll have to make you pay for it"

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#125

Post by criticalfault »

squidbeak wrote: post #116
criticalfault wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

take the reference of ladybird. in a couple of years they built the engine from scratch. it's going to soon enter Alpha. how many people from ladybird built that engine? about 10? all while everyone has said that modern web makes this task impossible

> it's going to soon enter Alpha Perhaps other browser makers want to move faster than Ladybird.

that's fine.

point is that Mozilla is wasting money and having 4000 people working on chrome may not be the correct benchmark.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#126

Post by amiga386 »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #72
amiga386 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do the billions of dollars from Google go? They go to the Mozilla Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances The Mozilla Corporation then picks and chooses what it finances within the Mozilla Foundation. Their financial statements don't break down how they spend on software development within the Foundation, it only lists out employee salaries, specific directors' salaries and gra…

My assumption would be that it's very little, given that Thunderbird was separated out of the Mozilla Corporation to MOZLA (or whatever it's called). On the bright side, that actually makes me a bit keener about donating to it; donating to the Mozilla Corporation seems entirely pointless given donations make up ~2.5% of their income, and less than 10% of what they spend just on manager salaries, whereas giving it to…

I'm not sure which part it is in their accounts, but their Form 990 says:

https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...

> MZLA TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION share of total income: $10,760,074

So they don't break it down, but around 10 million went to the corporation that runs Thunderbird and other projects (versus 658 million to the one that runs the browser)

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#127

Post by Gud »

sergolala wrote: post #23

Made an account just to say that I will not support the bloated mess that is Thunderbird that pushes on you a new way to configure it, a new layout and new workflows with every major update, makes it difficult to set up text-only mail and messes up line breaks every so often with no way to properly configure it, which should be developed by Mozilla, which is flush with money but rather spends it on theming their soft…

This is downvoted but needs to be said. Thunderbird was an amazing 90's style piece of software that has unfortunately been been changed into a more "modern" look, with excessive white space and power-user hostile work flows.

It was near perfect, just needed better search, pretty much.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#128

Post by account42 »

drekipus wrote: post #49
latexr wrote: post #17

If you press the browser’s back button on the donation page, they send you to a page pestering you for your email address so they can send you a reminder to donate later. Talk about a dark pattern. Mozilla has really gone off the rails. An organisation who claims to work on behalf of the user and who makes a web browser, actively hijacking the user experience to peddle for a few dollars? Why the heck is Thunderbird “…

I don't think it's a dark pattern. Just a common marketing thing. Not "everything that annoys me" is a dark pattern.

Most "common marketing things" are dark patterns. Being common does not make it right and we expect better than common for people who want our donations.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#129

Post by glenstein »

swiftcoder wrote: post #27
input_sh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see them begging anywhere, I only see someone sharing a link to their donate page. For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird, as in if you give it money it goes straight into Thunderbird. Many people here pretend to wish to be able to give money directly to Firefox, yet when they can do that for Thunderbird, people he…

> For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird Right, I get that, but why is it for-profit ? Fund raising is hard enough for nonprofits, convincing people to donate their hard-earned cash to a for-profit is on a whole different level.

My understanding is the for-profit structure was necessary in order to be able to do the search licensing deals finance Firefox.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#130

Post by mplanchard »

Vinnl wrote: post #83
Levitating wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now I don't think that's the case. "Thunderbird is part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation." Thunderbirds sourcecode is literally part of the same mercury codebase as Firefox. Thunderbird does have a very small team, and I think everyone that uses it should considering donating.

Yeah it's all a bit complex (just like the US tax code, I suppose). MZLA (which makes Thunderbird) is a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corporation (which makes Firefox) is also a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. In practice, this means that the people running Firefox day-to-day aren't the people running Thunderbird day-to-day, although of course they do talk, and technology choices made in Fir…

For their more common meanings, like in your paragraph, as a verb you want affect, and as a noun, effect. So, when in doubt, use that as a rule of thumb.

However, both have alternative meanings as the other part of speech.

Affect as a noun means emotion or disposition, and is mostly used in psychology. Your psychologist may say you have a depressed affect.

Effect as a verb means to bring about. You might say that a successful protest effected change in society.

As a verb, in addition to “have an impact on,” affect can also mean “to pretend to have,” like “she affected an air of mystery,” although this is less common.

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