First, if you haven't, go read Mitchell's Thunderbird post. Then come back and read mine. I'll wait :-)
I moved over exclusively to Mozilla Mail (the predecessor to Thunderbird) before even the core developers would trust it for their daily use (ask mscott and sspitzer, it's true.) That was 1999 and I've been using nightly builds ever since. No mail client, desktop or web-based, can rival Thunderbird for my specific needs (though PostBox, a Thunderbird-based product, was close until they changed the vertical view.)
But I'm part of a decreasing population. Every year, more and more of even my "oldschool" friends and colleagues have migrated to to web-based solutions. Some are living mostly in web alternatives to Thunderbird like Gmail or Y!mail. Others are using social networks like Facebook for just about all of their communications. Yet others are mixing and matching three or four different messaging services. Regardless of the specific choices, the trend is clear to me and has been for years. More and more people are doing messaging on the web and fewer and fewer are doing it from a legacy email client.
If Mozilla had infinite resources and focus, I'd want them to keep investing heavily in Thunderbird -- even if I was the only Thunderbird user on the planet (I did say if Mozilla has infinite resources.) But I have first hand experience with resourcing and focus trade-offs across Mozilla projects and products and so I understand the shift to a sustaining mode rather than an innovation mode for Thunderbird and I think it's the the right thing to do.
I will continue to use Thunderbird for as long as it is secure and stable or until a better (for my specific use cases) solution comes along. I'll continue to test nightly or any other pre-release builds and file bugs for any regressions that creep in and any issues I think should be fixed for stability and security. I may even find a way to contribute to some front-end polish issues that have been bothering me for a long time.
If you're like me, and you just aren't ready, for what ever reason, to move your messaging to a Web application, I encourage you to get on testing builds and call out regressions when they happen and if you've got the skills to do it, make some patches and help keep Thunderbird moving forward.
Also, I have some UI mock-ups that I think would really give Thunderbird a nice facelift without any serious functionality changes. If you're a JS hacker and willing to learn a bit about XUL (or already know it,) and you want to help improve Thunderbird's looks, I'd love to chat.
Hi Asa, for Thunderbird's UX and UI, I think that there are some good ideas in the parity-Postbox meta-bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=737347
I have read both posts, and I must say Mitchell's is much more fair. Your posts sounds like "there is no reason to develop email client", and her like "we are not competitive" or even "we have failed".
There are several problems I guess:
- email can hardly generate any revenues for Mozilla, and Mozilla is not about selling software...
- Mozilla had no idea what to do with email (I mean who will use the product), when there was leadership change, I tried to say to new leader that he must find a market for the email and make product for that. Tbird was nothing - a pure geek product. Unfortunately, nothing happened.
- I am not quite sure if Thunderbird had any dedicated UI and UX resources, but it looks so. And Mozilla is recognizable because of this. Thunderbird failed to adopt 10+ years old concepts that were must - like 2 line message tile.
Just to note that, taking all into account, I do support the decision.
Just to note that, taking all into account, I do support the decision.
I think desktop email clients are dead. But email clients (or apps) are alive and thriving on tablets, smartphones and hybrid PCs. Web-based email UIs are totally awkard and slow to use on a touch device, so nobody uses them.
I've been using the Metro Mail client on Windows 8 for the last few months, and absolutely love it. I have actually moved from a web-based solution (Hotmail) to a native client, because it provides great functionalities like live tiles and notifications.
Therefore, I was hoping for a Metro version of Thunderbird. In any case, Mozilla could've focused their energies on making iOS, Android and Windows Phone version of Thunderbird. There's plenty of scope for innovation in those systems.
I know the major reasons why I have slowly drifted away from a mail client, is that they never kept up well with gmail integration. The dated and convoluted thunderbird UI did not help either. I am always confused if my mail is being deleted or archived when using gmail.
I have achieved high levels of Thunderbird gmail interoperability, but its through the use of plugins, and does not always play nice with other clients (for example, the addition of the archive button was nice, but apple mail, for the longest time, did not have this feature, so best case scenario without plugins was that delete and archive did the same thing). Also, labels and folders dont translate well. Full label support was something I never figured out in thunderbird. The conversation view also was confusing when used with gmail, as it made strange changes to mail folder list.
Thunderbird would be awesome if it had effortless gmail integration. I know gmail does a lot of non-standard things like labels instead of folders, but its so prevalent, with so many schools and organizations using it that its almost inevitable that most users have a need for it. Is gmails nonstandard features Thunderbirds problem? I would says so. I would bet more people would switch back to thunderbird if it supported these things better.
There are lots of other cool things Thunderbird could have done that webmail services would never touch, such as effortless PGP integration, XMPP support, popular service streams like facebook and twitter.
I left my ramble on Mitchell's blog but I feel less inhibited here for some reason.
I'm not surprised and have always imagined that this would happen.
If Thunderbird adoption had been greater despite what webmail is doing, I doubt that this would be happening.
Thunderbird adoption sucked because of marketing. The lack of, or poor to non-existent, you choose.
Thunderbird is a great and solid product and whatever gripes people have with it could have and, still could be overcome like the UI, lack of social integration, an integrated calendar that had always been promised, etc.
So it was just a matter of telling, and showing people what Thunderbird was all about and capable of. It doesn't matter what the product is, if no one knows about it, it won't be consumed. Good marketing will get people to use whatever you want even if the product sucks or no one really wants it. Case and point, Chrome.
My technical skills are limited, but I too will do what I can to help out in other areas.
This is THE SECOND @#@#@# time I read about Mozilla quitting on Thunderbird and why you ASA think it is a cool thing.
Do you remember when Thunderbird was given to a sort of separate organization that should have developed some "magic" stuff while Mozilla focused on core projects? The funny thing is Mozilla developed only one thing that kept going that is Firefox AND Thunderbird. And all other projects were abandoned along the way.
Back with the "first Thunderbird quitting" the hype was Web applications, software as service. If things had gone like you said back then, nobody would have used Thunderbird because local mail client would have become obsolete.
Now with the "second Thunderbird quitting" the hype is mobile platforms, AppStore and MozillaOS or what ever name you give to it. And this goes in the trend of everybody dropping PCs to use smartphones and tablets. While "lounging on sofas" like something from MS in a previous post.
Well, I hope to see the "third Thunderbird quitting" in some years because as user I need Firefox and Thunderbird while I couldn't care less of other Mozilla projects. Same as before, I mean.
"More and more people are doing messaging on the web and fewer and fewer are doing it from a legacy email client."
Are you sure about that Asa? More and more people are using smartphones & iPads - an area in which Mozilla is massively behind at the moment - and these devices have excellent native apps for email.
I'd argue that it isn't desktop email clients that are dying - its desktops.
El Lizardo, that's not quite right. Desktops aren't dying. Some parts of it are, like email clients. But Web usage is absolutely still growing on desktops. Phones and tablets are growing faster, but don't count out the desktop just yet when there are still hundreds of millions of new to the desktop users every year.
Quote from @Ken "Good marketing will get people to use whatever you want even if the product sucks or no one really wants it. Case and point, Chrome." -- That is so classic, and powerful. I totally agree with every single word. Thanks!
Asa, do your friends who only use smartphone and social networks have jobs? Can they reply a email properly, design/build a website, write any document... on those *smart* devices? I agree technology is changing a lot and faster these days. But none of us need Facebook for a living I think (but the people work for it).
You guys created and have been taking care of Thunderbird for 8 years now according to the wikipedia article. And I've been using it since v2.0 on both PC and Mac. It's still the same Thunderbird as it was years ago. Please don't complain to the people about why not to use Thunderbird. Look at Sparrow Mail, look at the fresh UI, cool gmail features and iOS apps, I don't whether the sales is doing well, but it is a great try indeed. Thunderbird has 20+ millions users already, why not to make the number bigger rather than drop it.
I think, Filelink is good movement for Thunderbird (can't believe that just happened few weeks ago), I guess the team do realize that and trying to do something. It's not too late I believe, and I trust Mozilla as always.
Now, Firefox usage share is still going down. Without Firefox and Thunderbird, I don't know what is left there for Mozilla? Remember once the users left there is nearly no turning back normally.
Are we counting on the unknown what ever it's called "Firefox OS"?
@Ken: like it or not, Chrome is a good product. That's why all other browsers are copying it. You mean "Case in point", by the way.
Would Firefox OS have an integrated email solution like every other mobile operating system has? Android, for example, have a native email client as well as Gmail (which is installed by default to most users). While gmail is tightly integrated to a specific service, the native email app can be used for any POP3/IMAP mailbox.
If Firefox OS would have a mail application, although we might face some technical issues as Gecko doesn't support (yet?) raw sockets, this could be a big opportunity to convert Thunderbird into a an HTML5 web app by obsoleting its current user interface and making the application to live inside the browser.
> I think desktop email clients are dead.
Only in your world. In mine and plenty of others they are very much alive and very much critical tools. Web-mail is such an inefficient, cluttered and slow method, you'll spend 5x as long getting the same work done. And once your web-mail provider dies, crashes, loses your account, or whatever, so much for your mail archives. And any sort of "offline" access consists of wildly divergent, poorly designed and questionable hacks, all meant to duplicate functionality that has existed for years (decades?) in well-established, standardized and openly-documented specifications. So what was the advantage of web-mail again, other than as a stop-gap for those times you can't use your standard client, or can't install your own desktop clinet on a work machine?
I say Zimbra won this one, not Gmail.
'Mozillians' using it in place of Thunderbird pretty much explains their position, when Thunderbird was a priority project even on their previous budgets from Google, yet it is sent to the graveyard when Mozilla is drowning under cash.
Its rather disingenuous to argue how bad webmail and their vendor lock are bad, but bury a destop app meant to empower users for their email experience.
I can't tell if this is supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm not so sure we need any innovation to read e-mail. The spam filter works beautifully, and mail is easily read and searched. Those who use hand-held devices or Web mail probably need a different program that's designed for that purpose.
But we do need flawless operation, however, and we're not getting it. Does the new "focus on stability" mean they will finally be taking dataloss bugs seriously, or does it just mean that they will be taking away developers? (For example, see bug 366457, which is now 5 years old.) I notice that a plan to get rid of Mork (bug 382876) is also 5 years old. I can tell you, if I were in charge of software development, dataloss would be a top priority.
@Stifu Chrome may be a good product to those that use it, but it isn't a great one.
It's overly hyped and a lot of users are complaining about some of the same things that they once did about Firefox (memory usage, crashes, etc).
"That's why all other browsers are copying it"
They're not copying anything worth a damn. Especially the UI.
Also Chrome once got things out that were planned for Firefox quicker. Rapid release isn't the terrible monster that it has been framed to be.
"Case in point"
Thanks for the correction