Thunderbird 28 Jul 2007 01:21 pm
Thank You!
I just wanted to thank everyone for their positive thoughts and kind words. For every comment on this blog, I’ve been receiving an additional 2 or 3 personal e-mails of encouragement. Seeing this outpouring of support really energizes us and lifts our spirits.
We would like to re-iterate that we see great things for Thunderbird, and believe that a move to a new organization will allow Thunderbird to grow and evolve faster. The current situation isn’t working, a change is needed in order for Thunderbird to move forward.
One of our most important goals is to enhance the lives of Thunderbird users. We don’t know if we’ll ever have, as Mitchell states, “enough [people] to compete with other players for a consumer based product.” But we do know that millions of people use and depend on Thunderbird every day, and with dedicated resources and focus, we know that we can enhance the lives of millions more.
Additionally, we want everyone to know that each developer, localizer, and tester means a great deal to us, and every contribution to Thunderbird is valued and important. Adding just one person to the effort, for example a dedicated Thunderbird build engineer, will make a huge difference. In fact, just that one person would have enabled us to release Thunderbird 2.0 a couple of months earlier.
We feel strongly about being open, transparent and doing the right thing during this transition and beyond. We’ll be sure to keep you all in the loop as we move forward for finding a new place for Thunderbird to thrive.
on 28 Jul 2007 at 6:35 pm 1.Mitchell Baker addresses concerns about Thunderbird’s future : Mozilla Links said …
[…] The numbers alone evidence what Mitchell refers to in the previous quote and Scott notes in his latest update on the topic: “[For] example a dedicated Thunderbird build engineer, will make a huge difference. In fact, […]
on 28 Jul 2007 at 8:26 pm 2.Jacques said …
Thunderbird will now be able to fly higher than before.
We have only one decent open source e-mail client whereas there are a lot of free web browsers. I’m sure a good organisation and good people wil take care of it.
Did you think about joining project with Seamonkey to share resources?
on 31 Jul 2007 at 6:17 am 3.Sylvain said …
Why the Mozilla Corp. don’t dedicate the 3rd person needed to Thunderbird ? I’m sorry, but I can’t understand why.
Mozilla have the money, and a second product that needs a little help… so they decide to abandon it, to “help it” ?
It’s really hard to understand.
Many corporations spend $$$ to buy others to expand themself on another territory, the Mozilla corp have another products than Firefox, and prefer to let it go away.
I really hope that Thnuderbird will continue is life, because it’s the best desktop mail client.
on 01 Aug 2007 at 12:32 am 4.Cantalou said …
I fully support you in your quest !!!
I hardly understand why it is not possible to hire a Thunderbird build engineer. Compared to a FireFox advertising campain, cost should remain reasonable.
MoCo is a marketing company or an IS engineering company….
We must trust MoCo leaders, FireFox leaders and Thunderbird leaders to find best solution for Thunderbird. Be sure that millions of users depend on you and you should not give up their effort on Thunderbird because of big $$$$.
As of today, I hope that Thunderbird will quickly merge with Lightning and include a efficient contact address book. I wait to quickly have an open source alternative to Outlook+Exchange server able to easily synchronize with PDA or phone. But the vision could be broader and smarter that just copy existing tools.
Thunderbid could become the tool for communicating with your trusted community. Whereas Firefox would be dedicated to browse on Internet to get in touch with “external world”, Thunderbird would be dedicated to exchange with friend of you. It may include Instant messenger, File Exchange, Video conference, Voice over IP, shared events via calendar and brand new feature that you’ll create.
As long as content may be public, Firefox would be used to browse. As soon as communication should remain private, Thunderbird would be used with a reasonable level of security and privacy. E-Mail would become one component of your communication with friends.
I’m sure that there are a lot of open standard promotions involved as stated in MoCo manifesto in this vision of Thunderbird.
Good luck to you and keep the face
on 01 Aug 2007 at 4:14 pm 5.Yannis Matzavrakos said …
You know what? I really hope you do what’s best for the client, but I feel my opinion bears some relative weight since I’ve been a happy user of Thunderbird since its 0.3 release if I remember correctly - and yes, that’s years ago.
When Firefox was approaching 1.0 and the infamous “New York Times” ad appeared, do you know what I did? I donated. I am in this ad. But although I do love FF and happily use it for quite sometime now, too, I didn’t donate FOR FF. I donated for Thunderbird.
I thought that there wasn’t any similar ad campaign for Tbird, so I decided to donate to the next best thing.
So, yes, I guess you can call me a local user, currently using the daily trunks out of habit, since my Bugzilla account is inactive for awhile now.
However, for the future: I do want to see TB survive. Since I know it’s a project that encompasses much less people than Ffox, (Scott…David…You rule, guys), I know it’s a pain to bring it to the quality it deserves.
What I’d like to do? Cross-promote TB. Leave it under the Mozilla wing if possible, so that people will still be familiar with it (see: Seamonkey) through Mozilla, however, CROSSPROMOTE IT.
Discuss adopting features that can make it the default in a Linux installation (heck, I swapped Evolution with TB in 1 click using the shiny new GUI of Fedora 7, but maybe I needn’t have done that at all…).
Bundle it with other software. Hey presto, OpenOffice.org sounds a pretty decent idea. You know, OOo is placated as “the anti-MS Office, free and all”. Well, in lieu of an Outlook, put TB in there.
Merge it with Lightning / Sunbird first (who the heck needs a standalone calendar app? If it can read mail as well, so the better!), though.
Adopt some “Outlook-ish” features asap to make sure it can be bundled and used even more. Hey, for my use it’s OK, I don’t bother - But corporate use, or even government use in all those countries that started running Linux as their main OS in public organizations and governmental offices, can be trickier.
Evolve, evolve, evolve. I suppose the former-eudora-now-penelope-developers can help out, too - at the end of the day, their software won’t exist anymore, but Penelope and TB will.
Eventually, even if the market share of “offline mail clients” may decline, you can well outperform Outlook Express and its likes, in all its hugely installed base. It’s a POS anyway, TB is far better.
I hope you find this input constructive and meaningful. And don’t forget, if you decide to take donations for TB, I’ll be there and will support you - You’ve made an important part of my life, e-mail, so much better (And yes, I do have a Gmail account, but its still no match for the features of an offline client, period).
Keep it up, and thanks for the good work so far!
Best,
Yannis aka John aka sovjohn
//A Thunderbird follower.
on 03 Aug 2007 at 10:02 am 6.Syamsul Anuar said …
I will also follow the TB path with great interest… and if you need some funding, I will squeeze it up from my CEO bare hand.
Just an opinion, rather than investing a lot on promotion like FF did, why not utilize the fund more on the features and great product build? With great product, the word of mouth will spread faster and higher user satisfaction!
Also, Find some collaboration ways with OOo as they need you more there.
Just like “Yannis aka John aka sovjohn”, I was a TB user, then Evolution user b4 I realize it was a mistake and switch back to TB2 which I say really ROCKS!!
You know what, I’M SICK OF OUTLOOK!!
on 07 Aug 2007 at 8:46 am 7.sunnysardine said …
I don’t think that special call is done just for asking more people getting involved in Thunderbird! I don’t know why I have such bad feeling about her call, I just believe that there must be some conflict among CEO and developers, a conflict about vision and resource for Thunderbird. Well, is it having others to discuss about the conflict in cooperation, a value of openness and freedom? Or is it just like an ordinary general election debate, where each of them stands on own point of view, fighting for their own rights?
Is Mozilla Foundation sick because of politics in organization? Please, please, please, solve the conflict if there is any, don’t let Mozilla sick. I LOVE MOZILLA! GAMBATEH!
on 09 Aug 2007 at 11:05 am 8.carlos said …
just to tell that before i used firefox i begin to use Thunderbird. only after i switched to firefox also.
So for me thunderbird is the best mail client and because of it i become a localizer.
Mozilla must deploy $$$ or whatever to make it even better and do not forget that the web is not web pages but also mail lots of mail that need to be processed.
Go Thunderbird Go
on 19 Aug 2007 at 1:29 am 9.sunnysardine said …
好久不見(How do you do?)
I have 3 question and hopefully you can answer me.
Since the beginning of Thunderbird, is it simply a email client alternative for M$ Outlook Express?
Will Thunderbird goal goes further aiming something like alternative for M$ Outlook?
Is there any plan for adding simple CRM functions to Thunderbird since many companies are using Thunderbird? Giving another irresistible reason for people to use Thunderbird?
Nice day.
on 21 Aug 2007 at 10:58 am 10.JC said …
I have been using Thunderbird for 4 years or so, so I want you guyst to continue!!
I mentioned this below, but, in the interest of an independent revenue stream, how about you build a google searchbar into Thunderbird, simply for added financial support? Then you can have the type of arrangement Firefox has, but still pursue the independent Thunderbird vision?
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