Help Keep Thunderbird Alive • Hacker News Board

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#331

Post by cowmix » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

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 have the same beef with the Signal Foundation. A few years ago, I engaged with the new CEO when she was soliciting donations and asked whether they were going to publish any kind of high-level feature roadmap. I explained that there were a few features I was really looking forward to, and that I’d even written some code that might help expedite them getting rolled in. She told me that stuff like publishing roadmaps takes time and resources they don’t have.

https://x.com/Cowmix/status/1597636735688900608

Gah!

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#332

Post by ryanleesipes » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

rentzsch wrote: post #282

pavon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What percentage of their money do they spend on developers? If it is more than 50% on "non-charitable activities" (of which software development is not considered) - they may be on the wrong side of the IRS.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#333

Post by bpt3 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

wsmwk wrote: post #223

bpt3 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a wholly owned subsidiary. They're separate from Firefox, not Mozilla.

To be more clear: * MZLA are a subsidiary of Mozilla FOUNDATION * MZLA are separate from Mozilla CORPORATION aka Firefox

And both are owned and controlled by Mozilla Foundation, which is the issue. Why on earth would I donate money to an organization that seems dedicated to doing as little as possible other than acting as a tool to be used for the personal benefit of its leaders?

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#334

Post by nubinetwork » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

> we don't run ads

Proceeds to run an ad. An ad for yourself is still an ad.

Why couldn't this be shown when I upgraded thunderbird, rather than at a random time of your choosing?

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#335

Post by kn100 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:11 PM UTC

ryanleesipes wrote: post #322

CEO of MZLA (the Mozilla entity that develops Thunderbird). One point of clarification, we don't get money from any source but our donors. After years of funding issues, MZLA was created by the Mozilla Foundation and the Thunderbird Council (our community governance body), to provide a legal/financial home for Thunderbird. Launching Thundermail this year (an email service) which we hope to help provide even more fund…

Thundermail is a great idea! I'd be more than happy to switch over assuming the migration path from say Gmail, Fastmail, etc was easy enough, and it supported custom domains.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#336

Post by ternaryoperator » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

kn100 wrote: post #335

ryanleesipes wrote: post #322

CEO of MZLA (the Mozilla entity that develops Thunderbird). One point of clarification, we don't get money from any source but our donors. After years of funding issues, MZLA was created by the Mozilla Foundation and the Thunderbird Council (our community governance body), to provide a legal/financial home for Thunderbird. Launching Thundermail this year (an email service) which we hope to help provide even more fund…

Thundermail is a great idea! I'd be more than happy to switch over assuming the migration path from say Gmail, Fastmail, etc was easy enough, and it supported custom domains.

I can see switching from gmail, but it would have to be really compelling to get me to switch from Fastmail.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#337

Post by dragonfax » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

The law of Software Envelopment. Jamie Zawinski in 1995 stated that "software inevitably expands to include email functionality, or it is replaced by software that does"

Clearly, that's not the case anymore. Nowadays you just swap out "email" for "LLM"

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#338

Post by Ritewut » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

ryanleesipes wrote: post #322

CEO of MZLA (the Mozilla entity that develops Thunderbird). One point of clarification, we don't get money from any source but our donors. After years of funding issues, MZLA was created by the Mozilla Foundation and the Thunderbird Council (our community governance body), to provide a legal/financial home for Thunderbird. Launching Thundermail this year (an email service) which we hope to help provide even more fund…

You could convince me to switch from gmail but I'm not sure I would switch from Proton to thundermail.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#339

Post by MoonWalk » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:20 PM UTC

kmoser wrote: post #303

MoonWalk wrote: post #299

Is there still no way to export and import your filters in Thunderbird? This is why I shunned it 20 years ago. The absurd idea that you're going to manually run around to all your computers all the time and manually set up (and maintain) mail filters should have been rejected in version 1.0.

Filters are stored in a file which you can easily copy between computers: https://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_Filters#Export.2FImport

Thanks. But expecting end users to go online and perform a search to find out where the filters are stored on their platform (or platforms, if the source and destination are different) and copy them is pretty inexcusable at this point.

I don't understand the opposition to filter import/export.

Re: Help Keep Thunderbird Alive

#340

Post by cbeach » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

dwedge wrote: post #256

cbeach wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Gmail with my own domain (you have to pay for the privilege but Google Workspace has been very reliable and flexible for my purposes) I'd rather use Google's web storage than my own. I don't have the time nor the expertise to implement multi-region replication etc. I understand that granting Google access to one's emails might be a dealbreaker for journalists, dissidents etc, though - so clearly Gmail is no goo…

Expanding the acronym really works well here. Gmail is no good if you have a legitimate need for pretty good privacy. I would argue everyone does, most people just don't really think about what they are giving away. And how many emails a day are you receiving that a daily or hourly incremental offside backup wouldn't give you almost all of the benefits of "multi region replication"?

I’m sure I could rig up my own email server with replication and all sorts. I recall doing this many years ago, running SpamAssasin etc.

Turns out the quality of things like self hosted spam filtering is no match for the world’s most notorious data ingestion and analysis company