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Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

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Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#271

Post by [deleted] »

antisol wrote: post #264
antisol wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I did try (politely, btw!) reporting a couple of issues on their bugtracker a long time ago, but the usual thing happened: nothing at all. IIRC there was no response of any kind. Which makes me reticent to put more time into writing more bug reports for them to ignore. I just found out about betterbird today. It looks interesting. I might give it a try. And if I see the same issues there, maybe I'll report it…

You actually got me thinking about it, because I've been living with a lot of this trash for so long now that I think I've probably forgotten a bunch of my gripes with thunderbird. So here are the ones that spring to mind when I gave it a little bit of thought. I'm sure there are others that I've forgotten about because I've adopted new workflows that don't involve thunderbird (e.g my calendar is a bit like that, but…

[deleted]

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#272

Post by mrighele »

cycomanic wrote: post #121
bachmeier wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I pay money to buy food I don't need to ask how the shop is going to use that money: I gave money, I got food.

If I am going to donate money to a company/NGO that wants to buy food for poor people, of course I am interested in knowing how much of that money is going to salaries, how much into activities of sort, and how much in actually feeding people.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#273

Post by antiframe »

tracker1 wrote: post #251
antiframe wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's all reasonable but the comparison is paying for (or giving them other revenue) corporations who also love to shuffle money around and can support causes you are actively against. The point being made was that people give causes trying to improve society more scrutiny than they give for-profit mega corporations who have in the past shown that they use their money for a lot of things detrimental to society.

Assuming there is a healthy market, then you have alternatives you can purchase your products and goods from. These alternatives may have other trade-offs and in fact, there may well be open and closed alternatives as well as hybrid options. Some people simply want the "best fit" solution for a product. IMO, this used to be Outlook+Exchange, hands down... M365 scaling has enshittified the bundle in a lot of ways leav…

I think we're talking past each other. I am not saying that people shouldn't be upset that if they donate to an organization that a large portion of that money might go to things they rather that organization not do. Like a $100 donation might have $20 of overhead or waste.

What I don't get is why people don't think the same for for-profit enterprises. If I spend $120 a year on some SaaS, I don't ask what portion of that goes into the CEOs pocket who might use that money to buy politicians to advance tax policy they prefer, or government contracts against the public interest, etc.

It's not about the expected value of a product, it's about what else your money funds when you hand it over to a corporation that people rarely consider. They should consider it just as much as they consider donations to non-profits.

Also, the assumption of a healthy market is not one I would take. A lot of corporate money is spent on regulatory capture and other ways to prevent a healthy market. Funded by customer spend. A purchase is against future value in the same way that past purchases are what allow companies today to make markets less healthy.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#274

Post by brachkow »

My usual reminder that actually Mozilla has a lot of money (mostly from Google), and, for example, donates six figure numbers to random political organizations not related to browsers and internet (not EFF)

Here is a breakdown, which was posted on HN few years ago – https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#275

Post by cosmic_cheese »

ano-ther wrote: post #32

As a lot of people in this thread advise against Thunderbird, what do you recommend instead (preferably for Windows as I am stuck on that)?

For Windows the pickings are unfortunately slim. On Apple platforms I use Mail.app which has done its job quite well for decades but as of yet haven't found analogues for Windows and Linux.

Under Linux, Geary once held promise but has long since stagnated and is too basic.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#277

Post by Zizizizz »

mrks_hy wrote: post #102
charcircuit wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail can be used from any modern platform through the web and has dedicated Android and iOS apps too.

It cannot do PGP, by design, just for a very obvious fault. It won't let you use your own domain and web storage. Sorry, no contest.

I use my own domain with Gmail

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1g0m0um/how_to_set_up... is what I did.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#278

Post by tracker1 »

antiframe wrote: post #273
tracker1 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming there is a healthy market, then you have alternatives you can purchase your products and goods from. These alternatives may have other trade-offs and in fact, there may well be open and closed alternatives as well as hybrid options. Some people simply want the "best fit" solution for a product. IMO, this used to be Outlook+Exchange, hands down... M365 scaling has enshittified the bundle in a lot of ways leav…

I think we're talking past each other. I am not saying that people shouldn't be upset that if they donate to an organization that a large portion of that money might go to things they rather that organization not do. Like a $100 donation might have $20 of overhead or waste. What I don't get is why people don't think the same for for-profit enterprises. If I spend $120 a year on some SaaS, I don't ask what portion of…

While I get what you're saying, I think it's exactly in that the expectations are different between a donation and a payment for product/service.

You pay for an existing product/service and expect that product/service to be fit for a need... that's generally it as far as expectations go... some may actually care about a company being a bad actor and boycott etc, but that's secondary in and of itself. You immediately get the product or service that exists.

A donation, is against expectations for results... though there may be other reasons to donate to a cause/charity.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#280

Post by anigbrowl »

I installed Thunderbird for the first time in a couple of decades recently. My impression was that it's very feature rich but also quite ugly and not friendly to new users. It comes with a lot of assumptions about what the user wants to do and how, and I found myself having to use cheats and workarounds from the outset. I wanted to import a batch of disparate .eml files that had been seperately exported, and after 15 minutes I was starting to think it might have been easier to just do it in Python.

I also didn't care for the tabbed panels, which make it feel as if the entire thing was just ported from a browser. It really needs some fresh design and user interface work.

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