I find this fascinating because it speaks to the challenge of software that is 'done'.
Most people are familiar with software that is 'good enough to ship, could do more' where the software goes through release cycles and gets features added Etc. But sometimes, and this more common with embedded programmers, the programming is 'done.' All the features you could reasonably want are implemented, bugs as they come up are swatted, but basically the software itself is as it is and will be forever. Its done.
I expect to see more of this over the coming decade. While it is certainly true you can reimagine and reimagine, and of course you might want to port from form factor or OS to another, but the kinds of things that non-developer's do with computers is like a monte carlo plot getting more and more samples.
Personally I think its a Good Thing, as it might stem some of the gratuitous changes we see on things. It also has the chance of making the world a bit more stable.
Kind of interesting that this doesn't appear to have explicititely happened very often before with email software -- but intuition might imply that it should have.
So far it has been much more common with say, networking code. Boring code which does what it does, and well you just don't need to rewrite it. Feature clamor in mail applications has gone way down with web based mail tools and smart phones. Much of the change in web browsers has gone 'internal' where its about faster JS execution or WebGL or something else like that.
> Kind of interesting that this doesn't appear to have explicititely happened very often before with email software -- but intuition might imply that it should have.
It most certainly did.
Pine
Mutt
Eudora
All are basically done, and are maintenance only. Pine turned into Alpine which added unicode, and that's about it.
There is actually a lot of software where this happens. Tex, and gzip come to mind immediately. I'm sure there is more.
It should have happened with Thunderbird some time ago. Thunderbird is one of those programs where my heart would sink as soon as I learned there was a new update queued up. They always break something.
The problem with their tabs is that they put different things on the same sized window. I like my overall Tbird to be almost full screened. But I like messages relatively narrow, because I (and people) generally read less efficiently if the lines are really long; it's harder to track back to the beginning of the next line accurately.
I like tabs in urxvt, vim, Firefox, etc. But they don't work well for me in Tbird.
Speaking of features, does Thunderbird have a built-in Gmail-like conversation view yet? There's an extension, but eight years after Gmail, do people really still not want this enough for it to be a core feature? Many other email clients have it, and it's much nicer than a message list.
Disclaimer: I haven't used Thunderbird for years, but I'm not too satisfied with the clients I'm currently using.
Thunderbird is far from 'done'. They had plans to replace somewhat problematic Mork format with SQLite based storage since 2008, and it was never implemented.
Software can't be "done". Webmail was done, then gmail came along. Phone calls were done, then google voice came along. Mobile phones were done, then iPhone came along.
I'm pretty happy with this actually, but still a bit worried.
Happy, because for once a company didn't see a perfectly good--but decade-old--piece of software and think, "Gee, this has been around for a decade and it hasn't changed, let's RE-INVENT EVERYTHING!!!" (See: Gnome 3, Windows 8). Thunderbird is stable, works, and does its job excellently; no need to turn a wheel into a square just because it's old.
On the other hand, there is still some room for improvement in Thunderbird: Gmail integration is kind of hacky and gross-looking (A "[Gmail]" folder? Really?), it could use better Linux desktop integration (notification icons, OSD bubbles, etc.--all of these kind of work, but in half-assed way, I've found). And of course, the ever-important security updates. Even stable software needs security updates on occasion, and someone has to provide that.
So with that said: kudos to Mozilla for not undertaking change just for the sake of change like so many other big software projects have of late; but I hope Thunderbird gets just a little more polish before it's placed atop its permanent pedestal, and I hope someone sticks around to keep it secure for its second decade of life.
You can hide it, but "Drafts," "Sent Mail," and "Trash" are under the "[Gmail]" folder. (Even though there's a duplicate and empty "Trash" folder above the root.) I check those frequently so it has to stay. I'm pretty sure Thunderbird hacks around some Gmail quirks already, they may as well hack around this one too while they're at it!
How do you configure Thunderbird to remove the [Gmail] folder. I can select which subfolders I subscribe to - but still the root [Gmail] folder is always there.
Happy to heard this, people working into extendible software should work into core apis and let the community build the rest. I was with very little hope when I saw the thread title. Thunderbid is the last application on wich I want a change. I was/am a Firefox fan, but I'm currently using chrome all day..
I think the chat integration is the last remaining puzzle piece. If thunderbird had builtin chat and builtin gpg support I'd be content. I have never understood why smime was baked in but gpg was not. Enigmail should not need to exist and unlike any other ff/tb plugins it used to be a pain with amd64...
Enigmail works great here. I don't really see a need to bring it mainline, perhaps other than encouraging adoption. I use 64-bit and have used Enigmail for 3+ years without issue now -- I think it's probably safe at this point, especially if you can install from your package manager (as I can with an AUR helper on Arch).
"Enigmail works great here" that's good to know I never said it did not. We can agree to disagree about it being in mainline and receiving the same attention and support as the rest of thunderbird. I don't think your "+3 years" have really exposed you to all the growing pains enigmail has had.
I agree, Enigmail has been around longer than I've actively used it (for the record, I had installed it occasionally before, but hardly used it). The point I was making is that it seems to be stable and mature software now, and that maturity has existed for a reasonably long time. Surely there's not much point in holding a grudge against software with a buggy past; that'd severely limit the pool of available software...
So couldn't they have avoided all this by saying it's going into "maintenance mode" or something? Software development history is full of packages that have fallen into bugfix-only status. Sheesh, what a lot of drama.
Note that the email was intended as an internal (and confidential) heads-up to Mozilla contributors, not as a press release. And I'm not sure how "ongoing security and stability maintenance" is harder to understand than "maintenance mode."
Sure, and I agree, but it was buried in a whole bunch of really bad Business Writing(tm):
However, Thunderbird is one of the very few truly free and open source multi-platform email applications available today and we want to defend these values. We’re not “stopping” Thunderbird, but proposing we adapt the Thunderbird release and governance model in a way that allows both ongoing security and stability maintenance, as well as community-driven innovation and development for the product. This will mean an eventual shift in how we staff Thunderbird at Mozilla Corporation – we are still working out details, but some people will likely end up on other Mozilla projects.
That sounds reasonable to me as an internal email. Basically, they're saying that Mozilla is going to stop active feature development and assume a role as a corporate BFDL (hence "community-driven innovation", i.e., "we may merge new stuff sometimes, but will mostly likely not be writing it"), and expect new people on your product's team soon.
>I'm not sure what you're giving them a pass for here, why wouldn't an internal email be more clear?
The mail seemed entirely clear to me. I think it was just not written in language suitable to non-technical people. I believe most people involved with OSS would recognize this shift into a community maintainer / BFDL as typical and non-threatening.
A "tech journalist" misinterpreted the letter as meaningless corpo-speak since he didn't understand the context or the real-life relevance of its content, and that's what sparked this whole thing about Thunderbird becoming dead. I don't believe it was meant to get spread in that way even if the execs thought some leakage would occur.
This doesn't mean those developers won't contribute to Thunderbird in their own free time as a hobby project. It also doesn't mean that an outsider interested in the project can't see an opportunity to pick up the torch.
Thunderbird is a very widely used piece of software without many adequate competitors and I think there will be plenty of people interested in tinkering with its code for a long time to come.
Because, you know, the day they stop committing, is the day that thunderbird stops working and takes all your mail store with it.
Oh, actually, that's not true! I'm still using TB3 installed with my Ubuntu 10.10, and there's nothing missing there. I'm sure that the latest 2013 TB is going to be usable through 2015 at least. No need to look for replacement now.
I know their strategy is "everything online", but if 20+ million people are using it (from the article) then that market doesn't look like such a waste of time, does it?
I suspect that unlike Firefox, which actually brings in money (mostly from search engine referrals, specifically from Google), Thunderbird doesn't bring in any significant money, if at all.
Mozilla is a non-profit (or is it a not-for-profit?), but I guess they're trying to make each project self-sustaining, and if thunderbird doesn't provide any bacon (pure speculation on my part here), then -- yes, that market might look like a waste of time.
For anyone working on software at the scale Mozilla is, this truth will be recognizable: focus can be a lot more important than financing.
Mozilla has and will continue to invest heavily in projects which have no or minimal revenue associated with them. Sustainability matters, of course, but there is no rule that every project or product must be individually sustainable.
I'm cross-posting here the comment I added to the mozilla blog:
[quote]
Firefox went to live because of the IE dominance in the corporate and private world. In the same idea, Thunderbird went to live to offer an alternative to the Exchange/Outlook pair domination (and is still widely used in the corporate world).
We have a few very good alternative to Exchange outside (Kerio and Zimbra for instance) but
Thunderbird lacks good Card/CalDav support which is a feature request that Mozilla has completely fail to deliver. And that’s were the real innovation was (think about it twice, please). Instead, we are seeing Thunderbird chat coming in. “Great”. Are you kidding?
Furthermore, I don’t get Mozilla communication ATM. When I hear “What Thunderbird users have in common is the need for a very stable and secure email product – first and foremost.”, I just think the guy saying that is making fun of the users.
Finally, as I said yesterday on Baker’s blog (comments), Mozilla should remove the Donate link on its website, as long as the long term goals are as unclear as they are now.
[/quote]
I also think that the decision to stop Thunderbird is based on a falacy: WebMail does not make e-mail clients obsolete, or even less important.
Mulberry (https://www.mulberrymail.com/) is, IMHO, the best IMAP client ever written, but from an IMAP perspective (and not necessarily a GUI perspective).
I gave up on Thunderbird when it started to demand most of my system memory. I switched back to mutt.
Drat, the best of the bunch was Eudora. But when Qualcomm abandoned it and turned it over to Mozilla, it became a lost child, stranded between its former self and Thunderbird.
That Eudora and now Thunderbird should be end-of-lifed makes for very few good free options.
Even Ubuntu, which replaced Pidgin with the very inferior Empathy so they could be more "Gnomey", gave up on Evolution. I don't know that there's too much hope left for that one.
Are there any stats around on how many people are using Thunderbird ? There really arn't that many usable email clients around - yet, perhaps next to the phone, email is really a primary way of doing business. It seems Outlook got most of the business users..
Outlook has a captive audience. I suspect email in non-business contexts will fade from common use before a decent email client comes along. Or maybe it will be for "fmail" instead.
Given that SeaMonkey was initially (and still is, as far as I know) a community-driven effort to keep alive Mozilla-the-browser after the foundation had decided to stop supporting it, I suspect there is very little to be gained on that front.
Back-pedal on what? Both the original leaked email and the official blog post said that Mozilla would "adapt the Thunderbird release and governance model in a way that allows both ongoing security and stability maintenance..."
It was TechCrunch who somehow translated that into "So, that's it for Thunderbird." :/
The most advanced open source IMAP based webmail was RoundCube last time I checked. Not really gmail, but works well enough at least for small to normal sized mailboxes.
The main problem with running a mail server is properly keeping it up, secure, spam free, and trusted by peers to actually send email. These are not exclusively _software engineering_ problems with the existing (SMTP/RFC822-based) infrastructure. Rather, there's a large management component here, that is unlikely to be solved by software alone (open or closed source).
This will only change with a radical infrastructure change, along the lines of djb's Internet Mail 2000 proposal. Until then, if you want your mail server to remain reliable without working hard yourself, you'll have to delegate it (to google or hundreds of other available services).
> They are letting Google occupy whole the internet by not creating an alternative for Gmail.
Now that statement makes absolutely no sense.
They have ~20 million users after 10-18 years (depending if you count from the original Thunderbird or the original Netscape 2.0 which added a mail client). Gmail has > 500 million accounts, let's say ~400 million users.
With 5% of the users, they're not making a difference either way.
Furthermore, it's still an apples-to-oranges comparison: I suspect at least 50% (if not 90%) of those mozilla users have at least one Gmail/GoogleApps mail account set up in their TB.
The main problem that gmail solves for most people, and which TB can't offer (being a software product rather than a service), is a reliable mail service. (I wrote that already, but you seem to have not noticed that).
> They are letting Google occupy whole the internet by not creating an alternative for Gmail.
Services available for you that are not google: fastmail.fm, hotmail.com/live.com, mail.com.
Mail clients that are available for you that are not gmail: Opera Mail, Claws, Postbox, Evolution, Outlook, Mail.app, and a whole lot more (though only Opera is really cross-platform).
Most people are familiar with software that is 'good enough to ship, could do more' where the software goes through release cycles and gets features added Etc. But sometimes, and this more common with embedded programmers, the programming is 'done.' All the features you could reasonably want are implemented, bugs as they come up are swatted, but basically the software itself is as it is and will be forever. Its done.
I expect to see more of this over the coming decade. While it is certainly true you can reimagine and reimagine, and of course you might want to port from form factor or OS to another, but the kinds of things that non-developer's do with computers is like a monte carlo plot getting more and more samples.
Personally I think its a Good Thing, as it might stem some of the gratuitous changes we see on things. It also has the chance of making the world a bit more stable.