Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Asa, I hope this is not inconvenient, misplaced or improper, but I wanted to post my opinion about what I've read on those blogs into your own blog as well, so we can further discuss it here (or may be hear your opinion to!)

Here it goes:

I am not sure what type of organization you should use in the legal aspect. But as a Project Manager, I would recommend that you split current Mozilla organization in three parts: Actual Mozilla taking care of XUL Runtime Libraries (everything that has to do with it including support for the databsae engine and future XUL desktop environment), then the Firefox and Thunderbird folks into 2 separated teams taking care of building the XUL part of the apps (not the core libraries).

Firefox team cannot take care of both Firefox and the XUL at the same time to my opinion. I think the 3 teams should be deeply connected in the way that both Firefox and Thunderbird teams should be able to work on add ons to the XUL libraries, but then the Mozilla guys should manage and maintain the code.

Guess Mozilla could split in two (as they already must be doing it, some guys do Firefox, some guys do XUL runtime) and then you could call more people to do just Thunderbird. I think this applies to your idea of Firefox and Thunderbird being subsidiaries of Mozilla.

Funds can come in lots of ways, including support for Enterprises and custom security applications which work as extensions for both Firefox and Thunderbird and could extend XUL runtime libraries.

I think XUL Runtime should me modular and extendable using platform specific dynamic link libraries for its non essential functions (aka internet connectivity) so we don't get into the .NET bottleneck problem of having to load 18MB of code to run Notepad...

I love these Flickr photos you've been posting - you could make a beautiful advert for Tb out of this one.

Sorry but from what I've read they are not trying to optimize the organization, they simply want to stop spending resources on Thunderbird since it doens't "contribute" to the Mozilla Foundation "mission".
I don't understand also the "let's discuss it" since it is obvious the decision has been already made and they are simply trying to communicate it as nicer as possible to the "community".
I don't know if this move is forced by the lack of resources or it is just business, IMHO this will give a different image to Mozilla and to Firefox too.
As Thunderbird user I am worried and a little upset.

LorenzoC, as a user, what are you specifically worried and upset about? I'm a user too and as a user, the lucky kind of user that knows Scott and David, the Thunderbird leads, I'm actually very confident that I will continue to have a great Thunderbird email client to continue using. Are you worried that Thunderbird won't exist any more? That it won't improve the way it has been improving over the last three or four years? I'm genuinely interested in hearing the specifics of what's got you, as a user, worried and upset.

- A

As a person who considers himself disillusioned, I'll repeat what I said elsewhere:

Clearly Moco and its Google bosses are cutting mail&news off, which is bad and wrong but being right doesn't buy you lunch. Probably the only thing which can be done at this point is to try to get some fraction of the googlebucks, rather than a total shaft, for further tb development. Not sure if that's possible though.

Eyal, you either don't have a clue how our organizational structure works, or you're just being dishonest for rhetorical purposes.

There are no Google people in Mozilla management or on either the Foundation or Corporation boards. Revenue is the last factor in weighing all of our technology decisions at Mozilla.

The plan for finding a better organization for Firefox has nothing to do with money. For the three options listed for Thunderbird, Mozilla could contribute significant financial resources to any one of them. Setting up another corporation under the Foundation, for example, could cost a lot of time, money, and energy. If you'd read Scott's post, that option isn't appealing to the people who are making Thunderbird.

Money simply isn't the issue here. The issue is how to provide Thunderbird, and the two main Thunderbird developers who constitute the overwhelming majority of the development process for Thunderbird, with an organization that allows them to chart their own path. There are scenarios on the table where that might cost Mozilla considerably more than what Mozilla is investing in Thunderbird today.

- A

As a user I share the same feelings as LorenzoC though...
I am worried about discontinuation, improvements but also that Thunderbird might go into some other road than Firefox about philosophy of software.

I got into Thunderbird sort of a year ago because I got sick and tired of Outlook bullshit always putting stoned within my path of emails. I personally think that Thunderbird is crucial to the Mozilla mission because not to compete against outlook will leave always a door open to IE through it.

Matias, why do you think that Thunderbird would go in a different philosophical direction when it's the same people working on the same product under the same infrastructure and process? If, for example, the Thunderbird leadership (Scott and David) wanted to go in a different direction today -- or last year, they are the leadership and that's their call. Scott has very explicitly said, "David and I are committed to finding the right solution that allows us to support our user base, grow our community, and re-energize Thunderbird development." and that sounds like a philosophy that's not so different from Firefox's. I'm actually hopeful that Thunderbird will become more like Firefox, with a larger and more involved community and the kind of energy that it doesn't have today.

- A

Having read the relevant posts, it sounds like Mozilla is suddenly positing that Thunderbird is actually not really in their mission of preserving an open, innovative internet, which goes some way to explain why it was always the lower priority over the last few years. Thunderbird is a good product and there's a few people working very hard at it but Mozilla is very Firefox focused - just because Firefox is doing so well, it seems.

It's great that Firefox is doing well, but how is Thunderbird going to do well if it can't compete with Outlook like Firefox competes with IE? Why isn't Sunbird/Lightning one of Mozilla's top priorities? It seems Tb could do just as well as Fx (or close to, at least) if Mozilla put the same effort into it. But they haven't.

And now, it looks like they're trying to make it's second-tier status official. Causing our last faint hope to dim. That's why we are sad. Is this not a reasonable interpretation of events to date?

May be Mozilla should redefine its "mission"... In which way does Thunderbird not contribute to make internet a better place for users? (And yes, thank God I don't use calendar systems, cause there is still a little more work to do with Sunbird). Or, did I misinterpreted your words at the Argentinean conference you gave us a few weeks ago? I couldn't think of a better companion of Firefox than Thunderbird... Really...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw

I am worried once Mozilla drops Thunderbird it becomes just another Open Source software, more or less community driven. Just compare Firefox to Epiphany or K-Meleon and you get what I mean. Are you telling me Thunderbird is already like K-Meleon and there is no way to make things better? Nice, but it would have been nicer to know that BEFORE adopting Thunderbird as my mail client. Because, you know, my mailbox is much more critical than the browser. Maybe the mail is not part of Mozilla "mission" but I can erase the whole Firefox profile and who cares, while I would lose 5 mail accounts doing the same on Thunderbird, plus of course there are GB of sensible data stored there. Firefox is a toy, Thunderbird is a work tool and serious business for me. So it is not fun reading we were just kidding about the mail client so far.

Above all, for somebody who supported Netscape/Mozilla at work in ages when people made fun of you like you were a "trekkie" in the StarFleet uniform, it is disappointing to see Mozilla officially giving up the mail client.
Tell me again about the mission while I look for a way to migrate my mail to Outlook.

Well, continuing with the StarTrek kinda comparison...

Firefox and Thunderbird should be like Batman and Robin...

I really don't understand this discussion . as i learned on cebit 2007 openoffice and staroffice people looking for a PIM for there Office Suite.
Why you guys don't sit together and try to finish two major issues
1.Address book
2.Lightning.
by the way lightning and google calendar works perfectly.
and then start getting grip on the road with Thunderbird
it is one of the best bases to get people off outlook.
you have to compete to develop forward.

a thunderbird fan.

I have just purchased a new/used computer because my old one broke down. My father has my old office suite disks and lost them. I called MS and they said they would not send me my 2003 disks because they are making 2007. What ever..

I then have a question with Vista and call MS again and the jerks say despite the fact the software is 0 days old and their warranty is 90 days, they still want to charge me $50.00 because they say HP installed the software and added their own software to check to see if Vista is running right because it's having a variety of problems. I told them, bused on my experiences with them I would do everything to get away from them. I will not pay this much for software that is so screwed up, it requires huge teams of service technicans more or less writing down complaints to give for the next update.

I discovered Vista has Outlook built into its Vista software. Frankly, it's the best Internet Mail software, by far over anything I've seen. Until I see something better, I'm not going anywhere. So for me, I see nothing that Thunderbird can offer me that I can't get anywhere else. Nothing knocking the developers of thunderbird, but I can see a lot of things that could be improved up on the MS Outlook contact lists and Calender to make it simplier.

On the other hand, I'm apprehensive in using the Google tool bars because I know they use it to monitor evrything I do and it's too big brother, but I will try it because I would like to get away from MS.

With respect to the office Suite, I don't understand why, if MS has Outlook already built into Vista, why is it bundling it with the office Suites? Clearly MS, is having serious issues with its software bundling; the normal QA they do is also being done from software they made from scratch and they are screwed. People no longer want to be ginny pigs for MS experiments. We don't have the time in our lives to trouble shoot. If I'm going to spend my hard earned money to buy a product, I want to it work perfectly and handle the demands to put on it without any problems. If you don't have competition, you have no reason to improve of your product.

I am willing to take a less functional product from people I know are humping it and legitimately trying to catch the big guys. Right now Firefox is great, but Thunderbird still has a long ways to go to prove they can scrap.

I just upgraded Java and downloaded open office-I haven't tried it yet, but going to give it a chance. Somewhere down the line, MS needs to understand, if you don't meet customer demands and stay on top of trying to listen to your customers, sooner of later, your customers will be your competitors.

Programmers see the world through their technical viewfinders, users through another. Somehow, what this whole discussion the "future of Thunderbird" - including the migration of Eudora to the Mozilla platform - is missing is the broader vision that Outlook has but very poorly implements, namely, that of a PIM, an information manager. What those of us who've been around a while as users have been waiting for is bringing something like the old ECCO forward. What we have now in Mozilla is a completely fragmented, unintegrated vision of what a PIM would look like. Sure you need a browser to grab info from the web. But you also use the web to communicate with others through email and, I guess, chat (don't know, too old). To communicate with others you also need an addressbook and a calendar, especially in your professional life but also to organize your personal life. The myopia of the Mozilla bosses is stunning and the more I suffer the consequences of moving to this platform the more I realize what I'm missing. I made a big mistake taking Mozilla at its word Thunderbird is, politely put, half a program. Not the fault of its development team. The fault of the Mozilla Foundation which somehow decided browsing was the only way people find information and organize it on the web. Wrong.