
Thunderbird’s New Home - sashk
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
======
wink
I admit that software needs some sort of upkeep to not fall to bitrot, but I
simply don't understand how we got to the near-falldown of Thunderbird a few
years ago. You don't have to add new features, keeping it alive and simply
fixing critical bugs is fine. Basically everyone I know would prefer a stable
mail client not getting any new features over a few new features and addons
breaking.

I'm really happy Thunderbird hasn't gone the way of the dodo.

~~~
azinman2
The UX is that of the 90s. FF continues to see progress beyond the web
browsers of the 90s, why shouldn’t Thunderbird?

~~~
acabal
Maybe, but the UX _works_. I'd be very happy if they didn't start tinkering
just for the sake of not being "stale". (See: Gnome Shell.)

As a daily user for 10+ years I can say there is certainly room to
incrementally improve TB in many areas, like calendar and contacts, but don't
mess with UX success.

~~~
whatisthiseven
I used thunderbird for years, gave up, and then tried it again a couple years
ago. I think the UI/UX is really bad and was the reason I had forgotten why I
left, and it was the reason I gave up the second time.

I unfortunately can't remember my complaints to make them more specific for a
lively discussion, but I guess I am an anecdotal counter-point for thinking
the UX was actually not a success.

~~~
ForHackernews
I'd say a bad UI that is stable and familiar to the majority of users is
actually a better UX than some new thing. See the MS Office "ribbon" interface
for a good example.

Car manufacturers don't try to reinvent the steering wheel & pedals UI every
couple years.

~~~
whatisthiseven
That is basically the motto of the Bloomberg Terminal, so I would agree with
that to some extent.

------
tracker1
I mentioned this in another thread... but Mozilla/Thunderbird (not MZLA)
should really concentrate more on feature-rich support. Specifically better
calendar and provider integration.

Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and
calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. As much
as I like some of the mail hosts out there, for some, the ability to self-host
is big. The various pieces and software you have to cobble together are
cumbersome, and even then, you don't get anything close to what
Exchange+Outlook gives you.

It would be nice to see Thunderbird fill this space, it used to be what I
would consider a best of breed email & newsgroup client, now, I'm not sure I
would say anything close to that.

~~~
samdunham
A near 100% drop-in replacement for Exchange server is kind of the holy grail
of messaging/collaboration. I was looking at something that claimed to be that
(or close) many, many years ago when I was doing consulting, so I could try to
save my clients some money. But nothing had all of the features they wanted or
was as seamless as they wanted it to be. I don't remember what the software
was called, but it pre-dated Zimbra (which I think I've installed once to dink
around with). I think this is more difficult now, with the move to cloud
services like O365 and Google Suite. But having a self-hosted, Outlook
compatible, Exchange substitute would be great.

~~~
tracker1
That has been my experience as well... these days Office365 is often the best
option, with Google Docs/Gmail, Fastmail and a handful of others coming close.
I'd generally favor o365 currently, but would love to see Moz deliver a great
alternative. They definitely have most of the expertise to do so (even if
UI/UX could use some improvements).

------
ForHackernews
Does this mean I need to shift my donation?

I've been giving specifically to support Thunderbird development, not other
Mozilla work [0] for the past few years because I think it's vitally important
that email remains an open protocol, supported by mainstream desktop clients.
Without Thunderbird, I fear email will be lost to the Gmail & Apple walled
garden.

[0] [https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/](https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/)

~~~
lowflyer
Based on this Twitter discussion, it seems necessary to update the donation.
Possibly because the recipient is no longer a nonprofit (previously Mozilla
Foundation), but now a corp (MZLA).
[https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/122222824579547545...](https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/1222228245795475457)

~~~
ryanleesipes
Thunderbird community manager here. This is correct. Moving from the Mozilla
Foundation (non-profit) meant we had to cancel recurring donations.

We hope everyone will resume via
[https://give.thunderbird.net](https://give.thunderbird.net)

~~~
zerocrates
There's no continuing option to give to the Foundation and direct support to
Thunderbird? Since the new subsidiary is for-profit, direct donations will no
longer be tax-deductible.

Feels like an odd choice (and perhaps, an important omission?) when the
announcement calls out the importance of donations to Thunderbird.

~~~
sfink
I doubt it's legal for money to flow that way?

You'd be donating to a nonprofit and getting the tax benefit, then the
nonprofit would be passing it onto a for-profit corporation. End result: tax-
deductible donation to a for-profit corp. That doesn't sound like something
the IRS would like.

It sounds like the ability to directly generate revenue was seen as
outweighing the benefit of allowing tax-deductible donations. (This is my own
speculation.)

~~~
derefr
Consider it this way: if a non-profit pays a for-profit company for services
rendered (pure expense on the balance sheet), are they "passing on" your
donation to the for-profit? I would think not. Non-profits need to be able to
pay for things. At the most basic office-management level, they would need to
rent office space, buy paper and coffee filters, contract a janitorial
service, etc.

Would there be a limit? I don't think so. If I was running, say, a non-profit
website host, 100% of my raised donations would be going, as expenses, to a
for-profit company (some commercial cloud-hosting provider.) That's still an
entirely-legitimate model for a non-profit to operate under.

------
dugite-code
I'm still looking for help upgrading/maintaining the Lookout add-on. This add-
on allows opening the proprietary Microsoft Winmail.dat files

I don't have as much free time as I used to, that and Thunderbird is removing
legacy add-on support faster than I would like.

[https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version](https://github.com/TB-
throwback/LookOut-fix-version)

------
_wldu
I switched back to mutt recently. I've tried to use and like Thunderbird, but
I just can't make it work consistently across platforms. I really think mutt
is the ideal mail user agent. If TB would just become a GUI for mutt, it may
be useful to me, but otherwise, it's just not stable nor consistent.

~~~
dmos62
I found mutt's ui difficult to use, but the main problem was that a
significant part of mail I receive is meant to be rendered by a browser, for
better or worse (worse). Can you say a bit more about your case?

~~~
bdamm
Yeah, I'd almost give a kidney for a client with mutt's power and
Thunderbird's rendering.

~~~
l0b0
And Thunderbird's configuration system. I tried getting back to Mutt a couple
years ago, but gave up configuring it after a few hours. I believe the biggest
pain points were multi-server configuration and enabling as much caching as
possible.

------
theobeers
I think it’s good to put a bit of separation between Thunderbird and the rest
of Mozilla. Thunderbird may have a modest but sustainable future of its own,
and ideally it shouldn’t be held hostage to the broader challenges and
shifting priorities at the parent company.

------
mixmastamyk
Will this affect development any? Thunderbird recently broke my "Virtual
Identity" extension, which I've been relying on for years. Not sure what to do
now.

~~~
the8472
Current thunderbird lets you customize your from address without the use of
extensions.

~~~
mixmastamyk
It doesn’t work well because you have to remember and do it manually every,
single, time for every message to each recipient. V.I. would keep track of
that for you.

~~~
iggldiggl
> It doesn’t work well because you have to remember and do it manually every,
> single, time for every message to each recipient.

I'm having the very same problem, but never knew there actually was an
extension for that - though it's a bit disheartening to learn that at the same
time it no longer works in the latest Thunderbird version. Hm... (There's also
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1518025](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1518025)
to port that functionality into Thunderbird itself, but it seems to have
possibly stalled a little?)

------
netcyrax
Why not a Thunderbird Corporation or similar, instead of another confusing
4-letters corp?

~~~
chameleon_world
I'm assuming other projects will eventually move to MZLA

------
big_chungus
> explore offering our users products and services that were not possible
> under the Mozilla Foundation

Can anyone offer insight on what this means? My assumption might be some sort
of for-profit endeavor?

> Ultimately, this move to MZLA Technologies Corporation allows the
> Thunderbird project to hire more easily, act more swiftly, and pursue ideas
> that were previously not possible.

Not sure how a different legal structure would solve what sounds like an
organizational problem.

~~~
RobertRoberts
MZLA Technologies is a subsidiary of Mozilla.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#MZLA_Techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#MZLA_Technologies_Corporation)

I'm interested in more clarification on what this change "actually means" as
well.

~~~
lowflyer
A corp has more flexibility in what it's allowed to do, compared to a US
nonprofit. Maybe similar reasons why Mozilla has the Mozilla Corporation in
addition to the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

~~~
ryanleesipes
As the Community Manager for Thunderbird, I can say that this comment is
correct.

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation had many rules about what we could and could
not do. The new Corp gives us more freedom, legally.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Freedom to _what_ though? I'm at a loss why a structure that's OK for FF, is
not OK for TB.

...unless there are plans for profit and charging a subscription or some such.

~~~
Macha
Firefox is under Mozilla Corporation, which is owned by Mozilla Foundation.

Thunderbird will now be under MZLA Corporation, which is owned by Mozilla
Foundation.

Why not put it pack in Mozilla Corporation? Because Mozilla Corporation has
tried to jettison it a few times for not aligning with their goals, I guess?

------
JeremyBanks
What problem is solved by creating a second corporate subsidiary? This post
doesn't really explain.

~~~
lowflyer
To keep money streams and decision making for Firefox and Thunderbird
separate?

------
selfishgene
Anyone know if/when Thunderbird will start providing native support for Gmail
labels (rather than using the less than satisfactory IMAP folder system that
is currently used)?

~~~
throwanem
Ideally, never. Tying an open platform into features that exist only in one
SaaS offering from an advertising company isn't a good way to keep it open.

~~~
selfishgene
I understand your point, but gmail labels are such a good idea that
Thunderbird should implement them as a native feature (even perhaps proposing
it as extension of IMAP standard).

Also think Thunderbird should implement JMAP (Fastmail standard) and/or Google
RESTful gmail API because these are open standards worth supporting.

Another feature that I would like to see more fully supported in Thunderbird
(through better synchronization with mail provider server back-end) is editing
emails, to include most importantly the ability to remove bulky attachments
without losing email text or touching important meta-data. Unfortunately gmail
treats each email as an immutable object, and the hacks that have been
suggested to date to work around this limitation have all been clunky at best.

~~~
bonzini
There's no need for an IMAP extension; there's already tags, but Thunderbird
is pretty much the only mail agent that has some kind of support for IMAP
tags. Google uses the folder hack in part because support for tags is so bad.
However it would be nice if Google supported both folders and tags.

------
burnte
God I hope this goes better than Mozilla Messaging. I nearly joined MoMess,
and was very sad to see where it went.

~~~
PandaWhisperer
> MoMess

Nomen est omen?

~~~
burnte
Indeed.

------
mastrsushi
An email client from the 1990's moves across two subsidiaries within the same
company. Tada

------
ksec
Not Sure if Brendan Eich is Reading, wondering if he has anything to share.

You need to setup an Entire Separate For Profit Company for a different
product?

~~~
laxd
Brendan Eich left Mozilla in 2014.

------
cable2600
I like the ENGMAIL plugin for GNUPG support. If I want to send encrypted
messages to my friends I can do so with it.

------
ape4
Thunderbird is a great product, love it. Is there a way to follow Twitter
users in "Blogs & News Feeds" ?

~~~
samantohermes
Nitter

~~~
ape4
Thanks I have started using it.

------
johnchristopher
> More information about the future direction of Thunderbird will be shared in
> the coming months.

Why ? Months is an eternity on the Internet.

edit: aye, aye for the downvotes, that's what karma is for, but would someone
please explain why more information about the future direction of Thunderbird
can't be shared now ? Does it mean there are no plans at all at the moment ?

------
0x689374
this should be upvoted more

------
ttul
Frankly, Mozilla should be rewriting Thunderbird with a completely clean
slate. Focus on privacy (ie detection of email trackers) and integration with
the big clouds (GSuite and O365), perhaps adding in some security features
that are today only available in really pricey business offerings. I’d love to
see this happen and for the next good email client to remain open and free
rather than being acquired and strip-mined.

~~~
anoncake
> integration with the big clouds

Integration with the big <whatever>s instead of supporting and insisting on
open standards is the antitheses to the open web.

~~~
gtirloni
I think that's a false dichotomy. Both can happen.

~~~
anoncake
Supporting proprietary APIs means promoting them, which harms open
alternatives.

------
sascha_sl
I'm baffled Thunderbird has to essentially be crowdfunded while Mozilla pays
their execs millions and experiments with mostly useless things in Firefox.
The only thing I remember worth anything was Container Tabs, and that's mostly
abandoned with little tooling and no sync support.

~~~
x3ro
They've rebuilt several core parts of their browser in recent years, as far as
I know, now being in a place again where I'm glad again I'm using fx instead
of chrome. I for one am glad they focus on their core product :)

~~~
ScarZy
Absolutely, the release of Quantum too changed my view on FX completely.

