Mozilla gets like 500 trillion a year from Google, no, I will not give money.
Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
281–290 of 403 posts
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#282> MZLA Technologies Corporation is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and the home of Thunderbird. I guess I don't understand why the open-source email client with zero revenue potential is managed by a for-profit subsidiary, nor why that for-profit subsidiary is begging for donations. Shouldn't this whole thing be managed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation?
Basically the IRS is highly skeptical of the idea that free software development fits the legal definition of a 501(c)(3), and tends to reject such applications [1][2]. That is why Mozilla Foundation cannot use donations for Firefox development, and instead uses them for activism. So that creates the strange situation where legally it is easier for free software developers to accept donations as a for-profit corporat…
Nice insight and links. I wonder how Hack Club (501(c)(3)) does it.
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firebird was the browser's name, after phoenix and before rebranding to firefox.
So it wasn't used before Thunderbird, that was the point of OP and myself. We were talking about the email client(!). And I was an user of firebird, the database.
Yes that is a confirmation.
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firebird was the browser's name, after phoenix and before rebranding to firefox.
Firebird was actually the database whose name they hijacked when they had access to AOL's legal army. Also K9Mail is now Thunderbird for Android.
They didn't really hijacked anything. Firebird made sense coming from phoenix. It wasn't a good choice considering the database existed before but it wasn't really an hijack in the sense that both are significantly different product that trademarks wouldn't have clashed. It was just annoying when doing web searches (similarly to gemini the google AI product vs the protocol).
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was originally Minotaur (when the browser was Phoenix), then they were Firebird and Thunderbird, until the browser renamed to avoid a name clash.
I really don't remember (+quick check) Firebird for the email client, do you have source for this?
No, the email client was never called Firebird, that isn't what I was saying.
Browser: Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox Mail client: Minotaur -> Thunderbird
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#286As of late 2024, Thunderbird was doing well financially.[1] About $8 million a year in donations, most spent on developers. What went wrong?
It's basically in maintenance mode. Are they trying to add features nobody really wants to justify their existence, like Mozilla?
[1] https://chipp.in/news/thunderbird-financials-doing-really-we...
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#287Made 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.
I liked the old style, too. Nevertheless there is View → Density → Compact / Default / Relaxed.
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not my domain, but I was quite surprised at the 10% processing fee expense. That’s ~$1M at their ~$10 income. Isn’t that quite a bit high? Or am I looking at something incorrectly. Maybe someone has some suggestions for them on how to lower that amount.
That probably means they receive a lot of small donations. Payment processors often have a fee structure that's 2.9% + . So any donation below ~$4.50 would end up having a >=10% processing fee. There could be currency exchange rates that are factored in at the donation end as well. I agree that 10% is high, but it's still explainable.
Yeah, and those amounts are much more common when organizations are pushing for users to make their donation a monthly recurring donation resulting in much smaller transactions.
I believe they use stripe and this would also include:
- subscription billing fee (up to 0.7%)
- currency exchange fees
- chargeback fees
- processing fees on refunded transactions
Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive
#289I really think Mozilla has run it's course. Just die already so there is room for something new.
As if writing a browser and an email client is a piece of cake and there are tons of alternatives ready to take over. Blink and WebKit don't count.