Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

"if it finds the right organization and the right level of community support"

That's a big 'if'. Thunderbird is a mail app, not a browser. Mail apps in general are in decline because most people have moved to web mail. I suspect the only updates you'll see are bug fixes or security updates.

Guy, I'd wager that Scott and David would disagree with that. Two full-time engineers can do quite a lot. I'm not sure if you were paying attention back in the day, but Phoenix, the browser that would come to be known as Firefox, rose from non-existence to fame in about a year with no full-time engineers.

-A

Asa, once you say Thunderbird is not part of the "mission" because the "mission" is providing web services through Firefox, well, you are re-defining the "mission" a lot of people belived before, much more narrow. It is no more about taking back the Web and so on, it is closer to say Firefox is for Mozilla the same Apollo is for Adobe.
It is not nice also you "urging" people to get more involved, since a big part of the success of Mozilla/Firefox is due to the huge support and evangelism it got from the community of fans who belived they were working for the "take back the Web" mission. Most users of both Firefox and Thunderbird went installing those software at school, work, mom's and friends computers for years.
More I read and more this issue gets disappointing.
You have to consider most Thunderbird users are "hard core" Mozilla fans, that is because adopting Thunderbird was not easy, given the drawbacks and features missing and it was a kind of bet or faith on the ability of Mozilla to develop a great mail client along with a great browser, as part of the general vision.
Maybe you are understimating the effect these last discussions are having on the "community" or maybe you don't care.

Xyz, can you provide a link where I said that Thunderbird is not part of the mission? I don't think you can because I've never said that. I will say, however, that the mission, to preserve choice and innovation on the internet, is a broad enough mission to cover just about anything -- including email.

I've also never said that Mozilla's mission was to provide web services through Firefox and I reject that claim. Firefox is, however, the big lever we have right now for making change on the Internet. We could put resources into VoIP, into IM, into Email, into P2P, into open router software of firmware, into any number of things that could help preserve choice and innovation on the internet, but we probably couldn't actually make a real impact, a significant and positive change in the state of the internet by investing in those things.

The Mozilla mission is not to invest in anything or everything that can connect to the internet. We need to focus on the things that will actually move the internet in a better direction. If it's not something that's actually moving and improving the internet, then it's just a piece of software, and while we all love and depend on software, our mission is a lot bigger than making software.

- A

Ok we are playing with words.
"can you provide a link where I said that Thunderbird is not part of the mission?"
Here:
"The Mozilla mission is not to invest in anything or everything that can connect to the internet. We need to focus on the things that will actually move the internet in a better direction. If it's not something that's actually moving and improving the internet, then it's just a piece of software"
Thunderbird = just a piece of software you don't need.

Then:
"I've also never said that Mozilla's mission was to provide web services through Firefox and I reject that claim."
See, since I work in the "Internet Industry", tell me why Firefox is so crucial for us. Because it is better for designing Web pages with CSS properties support? Or maybe because it allows to deliver RIA applications (with AJAX), the same business where Adobe (Apollo) is competing with MS (Silverlight)?
If I am wrong please give me some hints of what are those "new/better directions" we are moving the Internet via Firefox.

At the end, I understand everything and I am not saying you are wrong, considering the business. I am saying I am going to think of Mozilla like any other company providing software products. I will get the best tool available for the job. In the past I used Mozilla products no matter what.

Asa, about 5 days ago I started a weblog with my partner support in Argentina. The purpose of that blog is to make Internet a better place in my country (we are far behind and our problems are those you had 5 or 6 years ago).

I believe Firefox gained astonishing 2 percentual points in Argentina since you left and that is a good thing. I care for Firefox and Thunderbird growing because I think that if they grow, other people will feel pushed to make better software because of their competition. So, YES I WANT TO CONTRIBUTE to Thunderbird AS MUCH AS to Firefox.

One thing I thought about and mailed you about a month ago is to create seminaries and courses for developers on web standards so they make their sites Firefox compatible (and their mails Thunderbird compatible?). I think I can help bring the gap between Argentina and the US closer in terms of internet by doing it. I think this can indirectly help Thunderbird also. I am still patiently waiting for your reply on this.

I would be also glad to help programming XUL for Thunderbird, I have VERY little time, but I can do something, I don't know. I've learned all the XUL stuff and I thing it's just amazing. Actually it is something I wanted to develop for years but never had the resources for.

Direct me, please, what exactly can I do?

I feel betrayed; simple as that.

Earl, can you say more about that? I don't understand.

Matias, there are some links at Scott's and Mitchell's posts for where the discussion is happening.

Xyz, I'm having difficulty parsing your response. You state that you understand that I'm saying that we're not just a software business but that we have a more lofty goal and then you say that now you're going to think of us as just a software business. Can you tell me why?

As for question on Adobe and Silverlight, we're better if you care about a free and open web with documented and agreed upon standards and multiple vendors competing to provide the best implementation of those free and open standards. We're not better if you're OK with one or two big companies owning the web, choice and innovation going away, and participation decreasing. Now, maybe you don't care about a free and open web. If that's the case, then I guess I can better understand why you consider us just a software company. If that's accurate, then go ahead and go with the best piece of software for your purposes. We'll continue to do our best to demonstrate that a free and open web based on open and documented standards is preferable to a web owned by Microsoft or Adobe.

- A

Well Asa, If you really don't understand why people get upset about what is happening then we have got a problem. First let me say everybody understands the world is not ending tomorrow. Thunderbird is not going anywhere, yeah right, it never did. We are said Thunderbird doesn't have numbers but nobody ever tried to from the very beginning. We went on hoping one day, once Firefox had its own market share, Mozilla would have focused on making also Thunderbird successful. Now we are said since Mozilla has its own vision about how and where the Web must be taken, Thunderbird is not part of the vision and just a waste of resources so its better to park it in some corner. The probability that Thunderbird as "open source" project on its own, maybe community driven, can get new life and compete with big corporations is almost zero. Then one wonders what your vision of the Web is, if putting an "open" mail/news/calendar/etc client on everybody's desktop is not part of the vision. Since email is not going to disappear, the conclusion may be you think of an ajax client + offline storage/working capability + webmail service. Same for other web applications that are already provided as "alternatives" to the desktop common software like wordprocessor, spreadsheet and such. But hey, IMHO this is not the Web, this is more putting a whatever client on people's desktop and then push "services" through it. You add the word "Web" to the thing only because you use the Web to access services and data. I am old enough to remember Netscape, Java and now It seems to me the "war" is again the same with Flash and Silverlight. You say "open", but any tecnology is more or less "open" once you find somebody who pays for it. Some business model is based on licenses, some on advertisement.
The real question is "things are made in the interest of the "community" or there are (mostly/only) "users" and the business that can be build over them?".

Well, you know, when you talk about Firefox being a large lever to effect change, and not wanting to miss that opportunity, I start to very much see your point.

Using the same analogy, Thunderbird/calendar represents a very large crack. Thunderbird could very well be the next Firefox, if it can be "swapped in" easily like Firefox can for IE. Now there's an opportunity to effect change.

I guess a lot of us see Firefox as a kind of "Mission Completed", to quote the great man himself, and would like for Mozilla to now focus - at least partly - on repeating the success with Thunderbird. But this is only a matter of opinion, and presumably you guys know a whole lot more about the open internet than I do. I'll see what I can do about the blogging and installing.

Oh, you don't approve my comment I posted yesterday. Well, it contained some inconvenient truths about you Mozilla guys. Yeah, your comment censorship really shows your attidude.

Oh, you don't approve my comment I posted yesterday. Well, it contained some inconvenient truths about you Mozilla guys. Yeah, your comment censorship really shows your attitude.

Great work has been done with Thunderbird. This can be core of a new application that will revolutionize the Internet (just a hint: privacy for everybody). The wait will soon be over.

Great work has been done with Thunderbird. This can be core of a new application that will revolutionize the Internet (just a hint: privacy for everybody). The wait will soon be over.

I use Thunderbird since it came out,
and its the recommended email client for our 100 mail domains
with ca. 1000 mail accounts.
More and more people are switching to thunderbird,
if imap acl,sieve and lightning will work fine in the future
thunderbird will be the killing application to outlook by small companies.
The upcomining discussions to give thunderbird away get many people afraid
not switching to open source cause they feel no trust anmore
in future support, as humans are this will go to other products too
like firefox and openoffice, so in my opinion the mozilla foundation should more invest in thunderbird, cause a all plattform email client is more needed than new gadgets for firefox.
After all a few people will and would say that you were pressed to stop thunderbird by m$ to get outlook stay alive.
As an admin i only have the chance to promote firefox and thunderbird
where ever i am, if i would be able to code in thunderbird i would so
So please stop any thoughts of changing anything in how thunderbird should be developed in future unless it makes thunderbird a better client,
seperating thunderbird from mozilla suite would be totaly nonsense, and thunderbird should be stay a free client !!!
Best Regards
and thx to the coders

Don't shoot my bird please.

Don't shoot my bird please.

"Are you reporting bugs?"

Yes, I tried. And was met with stony silence. So I'm not inclined to try again. I think two developers may not be enough if this is the result someone gets when they basically say, "show me how to give you all the information you need to fix this bug".

Getting people to switch from IE to Firefox was relatively easy. Getting them to switch to Thunderbird was not as easy, the argument that usually won them over was "It's from Mozilla, the people who make Firefox".

For family and friends, this is huge. They trust Mozilla because Firefox is awesome. They don't want a client email built on the same platform as Firefox, they want Mozilla Thunderbird.

From my perspective (a long time Mozilla client user since the pre Mozilla .4 days) it's like the Mozilla foundation has become the Firefox corporation. They see the "open internet" through the eyes of the browser, and everything else becomes secondary. Frankly it looks like they are drinking the kool-aid of "the browser as a new platform". Say all you want about 'we haven't killed TBird' or 'still have two full-time developers today, tomorrow and in the future', it seems like the Firefox Corporation (in truth, but not in name) is taking their winnings and going home, afraid to tackle yet another battle. Fear, exhaustion, corporate (Google) pressure (stated or unstated), who knows.

The understood fact (like Phil (and others) state above) is that the linkage of Thunderbird with the Firefox brand has helped overcome the natural suspicion most organizations have of something new. This has helped gain corporate traction for the client that wouldn't have happened if it was by some other 'xyz' corporation or foundation. There are lots of good open-source products out there, but the facts of life are that unless they have name recognition of some kind, they generally stay out in the wilderness. The concept that "the best rises to the top" is far from the truth, as anyone who uses an XP desktop knows.

Through hard work and devotion to excellence Firefox (after what 6 years?, and who knows with Mozilla before that) has become a recognized brand that stands to re-equalize the browsing experience of millions of users. Too bad that kind of devotion to excellence and a willingness to tackle a titan (Outlook) isn't being marshaled in this case.

Kicking TBird out of the Firefox nest is (from my POV) a nicer way to kill it than saying so outright.

perhaps people who want tear down thunderbird should change to the companies which are allready looking everything trough browsergoogles
and leave mozilla

markus, there are no un-approved comments in the queue and I haven't deleted anything.

- A

[quote]Earl, can you say more about that? I don't understand.[/quote]

As other people here, I've been an evangelist for Tb for a couple of years, an d I have managed to make people switch their mailboxes to Tb, which has not been easy at all.

Tb has not been as robust as Fx, not for the average user anyway, and people would occasionally lose their mailboxes, and I had to work hard to get them back and persuade them to stick with it. One of my arguments was Mozilla. Stay with it, Mozilla cares for you.

I don't know what to tell them now; and I am already doing my homework, how will I be able to transfer their boxes and rules, etc., to some other app if they insist. Something which is not that obvious either...

Earl, I'm in the same spot as you. I've been converting literally hundreds of people over to Thunderbird. Where we differ is that I'm not trying to migrate them away from Thunderbird. If you'll re-read this post, the whole point is to explain that Thunderbird is not going away. The goals for changing the organization in which Thunderbird operates are to strengthen Thunderbird. Why would you start transferring people to some other application? That just makes no sense to me.

I'm a Thunderbird user. I've been using Mozilla email as my exclusive email application since M10 (yes, M10, probably before even the Mozilla email developers were exclusive using it.) and I'm going to continue to be a Thunderbird user for a long time. It suits my needs and the developers are continuing to improve it in ways that are useful to me. Why would I switch? Why would you switch? I honestly don't understand where you're coming from.

- A

@EarlPiggot:"I don't know what to tell them now"?
It's easy man, you do the same as Mozilla, you just say:
"Sorry but I need to focus on the things that will actually move the internet in a better direction."
Then, if/when they complain, you tell them to stop complaining and get involved as contributor in the new "Thunderbird projet" (whatever it is) because you can't waste your time with pieces of software that only "draw resources" from your plans of moving the Internet.
:)

I use thunderbird a long time.

But i don't test nightly build and report bugs.
But now i will...before thunderbird is end of life.

But what i did is, that i telling my friends and family about it and install it.

I didn't say I want to drive them away from Tb. I'm saying that, given the instability of Tb, I've lost my best argument, if they insist that the "experiment" is over, or at least they'd rather be outside the tube.

I drug them to Tb, I have to be ready to take them out, if I can't make a better case with its new direction.

I'm sticking with Tb for myself, as I am curious to find out just how difficult it has been till now to implement features as tabs for messages, "block sender", "combine and decode" binary news posts, a button for forward as attachment, etc...

What some people might not know is that Eudora is going away, and it is being poised to migrate to TB. When Eudora does throw in the towel, I sure hope TB will be rock-solid, if it isn't already.

E-mail programs have been historically subject to Internet exploits, and thus scary to use. What we need is not another Swiss-army-knife e-mail program, but one that just reads e-mail, never loses it, and isn't ever dangerous to use. So be sure to keep it simple. Please.

I would probably use TB now if it weren't for Firefox's reputation for having a tendency to lose data. I assume it will be based on SQL Lite in the near future?

For Thunderbird to properly succeed in providing real choice and freedom, it needs (in my opinion) to become the *successor* to Firefox in the way that Flock is currently trying to be. (You can think of Firefox as “Internet 1.0”; Flock as “Internet 1.1” and Thunderbird as “Internet 2.0” if you like.)

There are lots of people who use Firefox for day-to-day web browsing—great for HTML, CSS and JavaScript interoperability and ostensibly a win. But a large portion of that browsing consists of using “social networking websites” such as Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, even Blogger; or ”instant messaging services” such as MSN, Yahoo! and AOL's instant messengers.

Each of these is closed and isolated from each other, particularly its direct competitors. Any interconnection is done at the whim of one of these companies, one service provider at a time. I can phone a BT line in Glasgow from a Virgin Media line in York; I can send an email from RandomMail to Mom's Friendly Email Service, even if neither has heard of the other. But if I write a blog post at Acmeblog, my friends using Myface won't see it.

For there to be true freedom, there needs to be an open, standards-based, social network through which people can freely conduct communication. (This is what the Internet is *supposed* to be in the first place.) And I don't mean “social network” in the limited sense of “a website where you log in and can talk to your friends lol”.

I mean a set of standard protocols by which anyone can communicate with anyone in any conceivable way. I'm thinking of open, federated standards such as email, Atom (including the publishing bit), Jabber, OpenID and OpenSearch (and avoiding saying “semantic web” even though that's pretty close to what I'm on about).

Flock takes a standard web browser and surrounds that with structured social network stuff. Thunderbird should invert that. It should start from a set of high-level concepts such as contacts, presence, subscriptions and messages. Then it should bring in bits of web browseriness as appropriate to display the content.

(By the way, I shouldn't be writing this on your website; I should be writing it in Thunderbird, to: the web; cc: Asa.)

Imagine Thunderbird and Lightning, Pidgin, Skype (but Free), Miro, AllPeers and the Chandler project, all combined into the only communication program you'll ever need. Thunderbird should be that.

Greg, I would never ever use such a nightmare.
I don't need any "ultimate communication program", I just need a professional email client.
And sorry butI laugh of people that want to re-invent the weel 2.0 every now and then.

Count me in the 'tentatively disappointed' crowd. Maybe this'll work out for the better eventually for Tbird, but I tend to doubt it will.

IMO, Mozilla started off with a more general vision, and with the netscape-then-moz suite of apps as seed code, plus neat things you all developed as you went (bugzilla, etc). It seems that set of useful apps has getting pared down more and more as you 'give away' parts you don't want to focus on. Perhaps I don't see it, but the things pared off don't seem to be progressing nearly as well or publicly as what you retain.

My vote would be that you all stop limiting and narrowing the focus and apply some decent resources to broadening it. Put more back on TB, and probably more on the calendaring apps and their integration with FF and TB.

Personally, while I can't contribute directly to TB coding or testing, I do use TB at home and I've been getting family & friends moved to FF and TB. Frankly I'd hate to have to use outlook for home email so I'm really glad TB exists and that it has been so excellent in speed, features and quality. I just hope it continues to be so - whatever resources, sponsorship and backing it needs to be that.

Please DON'T make me go to outlook!!!! Keep TB alive and well!!

P.S. Does TB need a donation drive to raise $ to continue properly? I'd contribute if it was really needed. Or does mozilla.com/org have enough $ to go around and that's not really the issue?

.... So, I guess we'll all be watching to see how this all works out for TB... fingers crossed... (though it's hard to type that way ;-)

"Are you telling your friends and family about it? Are you installing it on machines in your jurisdiction?"

This is Chicken and Egg syndrome. I have no problem evangelizing friends and family about Firefox - and have done so ... but Thunderbird, no. It's still too immature for me to recommmend.

It's a great client though and I hope it is picked up and supported. Only 2 people currently working on it??

The main problem with Thunderbird (the software not the project) isn't lack of features, although MS Exchange, PDA/SyncML synchronization, and integrated calendar/appointment (integrated Sunbird) would be welcomed. It's the dated interface. Perhaps apologist will say the UI is based on matured, proven practices (although you would have hard time defending Address Book UI). But frankly, its UI generates as much excitement as Eudora and cc:Mail.

Are you guys who are complaining about data loss using the same Thunderbird as I do?
I did not loose a single mail since I moved over from Fort� Agent and I remember only 2 crashes in that time.
Even my latest dual boot setup using the very same mailboxes for Thunderbird installs in Windows and Gentoo is rock stable. (ntfs-3g ftw :) )
I encourage friends and family to migrate to Thunderbird and appreciate the work the devs have done so far.
From my point of view the new setup for TB development is as good as the 'old' one and I give them a lot of credit not doubt.
just my .02�

Hi Asa,
I am glad to hear the support for Thunderbird will NOT end. I have been using Thunderbird since the first release and I see great potential with this program. One thing I would like to see Thunderbird released to the entire open-source community but still held under control of the Mozilla. Reason I say that is that I see great opportunity and potential for this program. Since the Eudora email client has been turned over to Mozilla, why not integrate both Thunderbird AND Eudora together and create a new email application that can compete with M$'s Outlook?

That would be something worth getting.

LorenzoC, Thunderbird already includes a web feed reader, so it's already capable of doing things other than email. The specific requests of people who want a "professional" email client are quite different from those who want to use email at home; at the moment, Thunderbird is trying to entertain both.

You wouldn't *have* to use Thunderbird for instant messaging or file-sharing if you didn't want to, the same as how you don't *have* to read web feeds with Thunderbird now. The user interface shouldn't make it harder to use email simply in order to make other stuff easier. It should be easier and quicker ("increase productivity! boost efficiency!") to communicate with colleagues.

Are you sure you really want "an email program"? Are you sure you don't actually want "efficient communication"? (Somewhat-relatedly, Techdirt talks about companies not realising what they're actually selling ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070125/004949.shtml ); for example, the music industry thinks their business is selling CDs when it's actually providing music-based entertainment.)

And it wouldn't be reinventing the wheel - that's where you recreate from nothing something that already exists; this would be creating something new.

I've been a Thunderbird user for about 11 months. I switched from Outlook for a number of reasons, and have been really happy with T-bird and its ease of migrating my contacts to outside applications and other machines (the main reason I started using it). I've had two major crashes, but it was easy to recover my mail and setup by following some simple instructions on the Mozilla site. I've evangelized about it to my web design clients, and although I'm not a developer and lack the expertise to contribute to coding, I am a supporter and have reported the very few issues I've encountered. I really hope it doesn't go away.

2 full-time developers ? I won't definitely go away, nor anywhere for that matter...