Mozilla Pulling the Plug on Thunderbird Development

[MacLeod]

I used Thunderbird for a while and really liked it but honestly, since my Android Phone (HTC Thunderbolt) has a great mail app, I get all my email thru it now and really havent fired up Thunderbird in months.

 

[>GSXR<mrbusa]

You know had you actually clicked the link and read the article you would know thunderbird isnt going anywhere...

Since you're too lazy heres the relevant part to you.

i did read the article!
if you werent such a punk like most other forum users then you would know that once financial support is pulled these open source projects die eventually.

 

[Disposed]

i did read the article!
if you werent such a punk like most other forum users then you would know that once financial support is pulled these open source projects die eventually.

Riiiiiight without funding thunderbird will die... because it needs soooooo much to stay active. Get real man even if they pulled every dev and the open source community completely ignored it it's still good for many years to come.

Thunderbird won't die without funding don't be ridiculous. All it needs is a security patch here and there and it's good for ever. The open source community will keep it alive.

 

[Disposed]

Also, name one open source project worth a shit that did not live on in one form or another after losing corporate backing...

 

[>GSXR<mrbusa]

i cant name them because they are forgotten so fast.

this isnt the point, your opinion is just that, an opinion. your first response was nothing more than a chance to be a punk for no other reason than to be a punk.

 

[nOrVow]

All of that can be done within Gmail with the exception of offline mode. To manage multiple emails just autoforward to gmail. Google also has top notch RSS integration with google reader. Calendar integration is also kick ass.

I used to use thunderbird but after gmail and owning android phones its rather pointless to have a program do what Gmail does just fine and sometimes better.

The hate for webmail makes no sense unless you are avid anti google or are too anal to forward all emails to one inbox Gmail is better and simpler for just about everything you mentioned.

Meh.. forwarding and consolidating all e-mails into one inbox from multiple accounts would be an organizational mess. I like having my e-mails categorical to their respective accounts with a nested view on the left pane, makings things much simpler to manage for me. I also plan on hosting my own mail servers and getting rid of my Hotmail accounts for local archiving and better control. Less spam, less ads, less latency, professional looking (business/work, etc.) Not to mention backups.

I'm sure you can do this in Gmail with filters and labels, but it's requires a lot of unnecessary configuration. With a standalone client you just go through a couple easy wizards, add them and you're ready go already separated, and nested in the pane. it just works for me.

That's not to say Gmail is bad - it's nice actually after doing some research and I like it's chatting/conversation features. But I'm already situated here with TB and see no compelling reason to switch other than saving resources.. but I have 8GBs on my rig it's not an issue. I also love TBs user interface a lot more than Gmails. "Better" is rather subjective, btw.

 

[BBA]

Outlook 2010 rules the battlefield if you can afford the Office suite.

You don't need to buy the suite. The Office 2010 Starter edition is free, has outlook and comes with most any new PC as standard included software.

 

[Zoomer]

All of that can be done within Gmail with the exception of offline mode. To manage multiple emails just autoforward to gmail. Google also has top notch RSS integration with google reader. Calendar integration is also kick ass.

I used to use thunderbird but after gmail and owning android phones its rather pointless to have a program do what Gmail does just fine and sometimes better.

The hate for webmail makes no sense unless you are avid anti google or are too anal to forward all emails to one inbox Gmail is better and simpler for just about everything you mentioned.

Manage (send from) infinitely many aliases to one account
Schedule email sending
Search that allows headers of headers, and not faster search
Ability to sort messages/search results & look at the last search results effortlessly
Not being at the mercy of google updating their web client
Ability to customize or turn off spam filtering - gmail has a terrible false positive rate
Don't sometimes hijack and insert the @gmail.com address into the from and/or reply-to headers of emails not sent to that @gmail address

Gmail's web client is a passable client for many, but is really unusable for me besides a few quick no other choice replies.

Thunderbird is FOSS, so it's not like Mozilla can stop it even if they wanted to (and they aren't). Besides, with Microsoft's very backwards compatible view, one can run programs from decades ago just fine. In fact, I'm preparing to switch to Thunderbird after finally finding an acceptable configuration for it with some hacks and unofficial extensions.

You don't need to buy the suite. The Office 2010 Starter edition is free, has outlook and comes with most any new PC as standard included software.

That's being killed off. Microsoft's replacement for it is office live.

 

[Disposed]

i cant name them because they are forgotten so fast.

Right...

 

[SkribbelKat]

Right...

No, wrong....BUT...

Open source projects that lose corporate backing tend to fracture into a lot of different subversions that play up to the whims and specific talents of the individuals who decide to continue supporting them. Consider Open Solaris and the number of branches that spread out from the trunk after Oracle pulled the plug.

One of the few projects that surprised me was OpenOffice. In a rare showing of rational thinking, the FOSS community generally stuck to a single child, LibreOffice. That's certainly the exception rather than the norm though.

 

[Disposed]

No, wrong....BUT...

Open source projects that lose corporate backing tend to fracture into a lot of different subversions that play up to the whims and specific talents of the individuals who decide to continue supporting them. Consider Open Solaris and the number of branches that spread out from the trunk after Oracle pulled the plug.

One of the few projects that surprised me was OpenOffice. In a rare showing of rational thinking, the FOSS community generally stuck to a single child, LibreOffice. That's certainly the exception rather than the norm though.

Were talking about an email client lets keep it in perspective all the FOSS community needs to do is patch security vulnerabilities as they are found and its fine long past our lifetimes. Also keep in mind thunderbird likely had few if any dedicated devs working on it funded by mozilla. This is very common with FOSS software just look at kubuntu. Canonical announced they where pulling funding and people freaked out until they realized there was ONE dev paid to work on it full time. On top of that another backer stepped up and took over as well as hiring the one dev. Thats the most likely scenario for thunderbird, some company somewhere that relies on thunderbird will decide its cheaper to pay someone to maintain thunderbird than switching to something else.

What happened to with libreoffice is more common than you think. You're also comparing a distro to a program. Most of the time when a corporate backed open source app loses its funding someone keeps it alive, usually they change the name and there are often a few forks but one almost always keeps the original goals in mind.

So chicken little and his prephecies of doom are far from founded and frankly make no sense to anyone that actually reads the article.

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.

So yeah, all the back and forth about what happens to a FOSS app after it loses corporate backing is irrelevant since they said they are going to keep it updated for security and stability.

TLR mozilla is not pulling all funding they are not going to waste any more money on innovation in an email client and leaving that to the community while they hand security and stability.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

To be fair, I used to love Tbird. But honestly from a business perspective, Outlook 2010 just runs circles around it. If I don't need the full benefits of outlook at a given moment then gmail covers the rest. There is just no incentive for me to use Tbird anymore as it just doesn't fit any real niche.

Still love Firefox and Chrome though.

 

[Jasec]

I wasnt aware of this but reading more it seems like an ok announcement. Aslong as it remains alive and with bug fixes, is all i need. I love TB and was almost sad it was gonna be canned all together. Anything but outlook please!

 

[SkribbelKat]

Were talking about an email client lets keep it in perspective all the FOSS community needs to do is patch security vulnerabilities as they are found and its fine long past our lifetimes...

What the FOSS community needs to do may not align with what some elements of it want to do. You might it gets kinda kinky with the amount of "forking" that starts to happen. It only takes one somewhat charismatic person to lead a few others off a cliff of, "Hey, it'd be awesome if Thunderbird had this..."

To be fair, I used to love Tbird. But honestly from a business perspective, Outlook 2010 just runs circles around it. If I don't need the full benefits of outlook at a given moment then gmail covers the rest. There is just no incentive for me to use Tbird anymore as it just doesn't fit any real niche.

Yup...Tbird was nice and is pretty good when compared to Outlook Express, but Outlook 2010 is powerful, lean, and feature-rich even if one completely ignores Sharepoint integration (not that I like Sharepoint). Then again, it's kinda unfair to compare the two since one of them doesn't cost anything to acquire.

 

[Ducman69]

Kinda surprising they kept it alive this long since web-based mail clients are good enough (phones and business/enterprise mail servers excluded). A dedicated e-mail client program seems like a throwback to the dark ages when we used to dial up an ISP and tie up phone lines.

Hardly old-school, its just professional (mail client) vs amateur (web based).

Problem though is that you can't hope to compete with Microsoft Outlook until you can create an entire office suite that integrates email with everything else. At the very least, you need a communicator/email/calendar setup to work seemlessly.

As such, a standalone mail client is bound to fail.

 

[SkribbelKat]

Hardly old-school, its just professional (mail client) vs amateur (web based).

Problem though is that you can't hope to compete with Microsoft Outlook until you can create an entire office suite that integrates email with everything else. At the very least, you need a communicator/email/calendar setup to work seemlessly.

As such, a standalone mail client is bound to fail.

Well, it doesn't cost money to use. Some people don't mind the lack of integration (or even prefer it) and the price is certainly right. But yeah, competing with Outlook is a tall order.

 

[Hamish Campbell]

Kinda surprising they kept it alive this long since web-based mail clients are good enough (phones and business/enterprise mail servers excluded). A dedicated e-mail client program seems like a throwback to the dark ages when we used to dial up an ISP and tie up phone lines.

No, webmail solutions aren't good enough, not by a long shot. How are they supposed to handle multiple accounts? I don't want to have to log into a different site or open another app each time I want to check a different email.

 

[SkribbelKat]

No, webmail solutions aren't good enough, not by a long shot. How are they supposed to handle multiple accounts? I don't want to have to log into a different site or open another app each time I want to check a different email.

Tabs or more than one web browser window.

 

[DeathPrincess]

No, webmail solutions aren't good enough, not by a long shot. How are they supposed to handle multiple accounts? I don't want to have to log into a different site or open another app each time I want to check a different email.

Forward all the mail to a master account?

 

[Dekoth-E-]

No, webmail solutions aren't good enough, not by a long shot. How are they supposed to handle multiple accounts? I don't want to have to log into a different site or open another app each time I want to check a different email.

Gmail handles multiple accounts quite well actually. Using filters and such you can keep everything separate and basically do everything Tbird can do. I can send as multiple accounts, receive and even create send only's and mask addresses. Actually I can't think of anything that gmail can't do that Tbird does. Just because you don't know how, doesn't mean it can't.

http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html

If Gmail has that ability, I am pretty certain other webmail do as well. Though to what degree I couldn't absolutely say.

Obligatory jab at any aol users - I do know that AOL mail lacks a bunch of those features, but frankly if you are using AOL mail I have no sympathy for you anyhow.

 

[nOrVow]

Tabs or more than one web browser window.

I prefer nested list interfaces within one window.

Forward all the mail to a master account?

Disgusting, ew.

Gmail handles multiple accounts quite well actually. Using filters and such you can keep everything separate and basically do everything Tbird can do. I can send as multiple accounts, receive and even create send only's and mask addresses. Actually I can't think of anything that gmail can't do that Tbird does. Just because you don't know how, doesn't mean it can't.

http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html

If Gmail has that ability, I am pretty certain other webmail do as well. Though to what degree I couldn't absolutely say.

Obligatory jab at any aol users - I do know that AOL mail lacks a bunch of those features, but frankly if you are using AOL mail I have no sympathy for you anyhow.

What about LDAP client support? Accessing self-hosted mail servers? Message encryption and authentication? Transfer vital information through e-mail in public hotspots wouldn't be a safe endeavor. With a standalone client - you wouldn't need to configure filters. Have an account for work? Personal things? Mailing lists? With each added account in a standalone client - it's already there nested for you. Do you use mailing lists? It would be a complete bitch to organize a master inbox with a shit load of mailing list messages and several purposed e-mails from different accounts.

Sure you can access Gmail from anywhere with a mobile device given web access, but who's going to do any serious communications management and task switching with a Phone or tablet? Utilizing a laptop on the go? Look at what I've asked above.

Since thunderbird and Gmail both equate in feature sets, can you give me any compelling reasons to switch other than resource conservation? Since there are no objective advantages over neither platform, the issue is a matter of preference right?

 

[nOrVow]

edit: transfering*

 

[djkilla]

The whole point of having an email desktop client is being able to have all your email available on your computer to archive or read offline (very useful for traveling where online/wi-fi is unavailable).

At the moment, what would be the best replacement for Thunderbird? Hopefully something with quality development, lots of users and good support. Maybe Zimbra Desktop? What's a solid and free desktop email client to use?

 

[nOrVow]

The whole point of having an email desktop client is being able to have all your email available on your computer to archive or read offline (very useful for traveling where online/wi-fi is unavailable).

This.

Phew, someone else has the exact same reasoning as myself.

 

[SkribbelKat]

The whole point of having an email desktop client is being able to have all your email available on your computer to archive or read offline (very useful for traveling where online/wi-fi is unavailable).

There are times I wish I was someplace where there was no Wi-Fi or cellular access. That'd be so much less stressful and the last thing I'd want to spend my time doing when I didn't have to worry about the wired world would be reading e-mails and getting responses ready for the dreaded time when I am back online.

 

[Hamish Campbell]

Tabs or more than one web browser window.

That's not a solution, that's a hassle that I don't have to deal with now. Why would I want that trouble? With a standalone client I can have more than one inbox open on the same screen where I can quickly and flexibly do what I need to with my mail... Like easily saving messages to local folders or network shares or automatically syncing new contacts across multiple accounts.

Gmail handles multiple accounts quite well actually. Using filters and such you can keep everything separate and basically do everything Tbird can do. I can send as multiple accounts, receive and even create send only's and mask addresses. Actually I can't think of anything that gmail can't do that Tbird does. Just because you don't know how, doesn't mean it can't.

http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html

If Gmail has that ability, I am pretty certain other webmail do as well. Though to what degree I couldn't absolutely say.

Obligatory jab at any aol users - I do know that AOL mail lacks a bunch of those features, but frankly if you are using AOL mail I have no sympathy for you anyhow.

Sure Gmail is robust and can do a lot of what Thunderbird or Outlook can. That doesn't mean it's a better solution than those programs. The vast majority of the messages I read everyday are work related. A lot of those are PGP encrypted because of the risk of divulging trade secrets and we aren't just trying to stop unintended recipients or hackers from viewing these messages. These are emails that I (and I know my company) would rather not give Google (or any advertiser) the opportunity to crawl through.

If all we were talking about were personal email accounts, then sure webmail is alright. If like me though, you need to check 3 accounts daily for long periods of time (and a 4th throw-away account periodically) relying on webmail just wont cut it.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

I prefer nested list interfaces within one window.



Disgusting, ew.



What about LDAP client support? Accessing self-hosted mail servers? Message encryption and authentication? Transfer vital information through e-mail in public hotspots wouldn't be a safe endeavor. With a standalone client - you wouldn't need to configure filters. Have an account for work? Personal things? Mailing lists? With each added account in a standalone client - it's already there nested for you. Do you use mailing lists? It would be a complete bitch to organize a master inbox with a shit load of mailing list messages and several purposed e-mails from different accounts.

Sure you can access Gmail from anywhere with a mobile device given web access, but who's going to do any serious communications management and task switching with a Phone or tablet? Utilizing a laptop on the go? Look at what I've asked above.

Since thunderbird and Gmail both equate in feature sets, can you give me any compelling reasons to switch other than resource conservation? Since there are no objective advantages over neither platform, the issue is a matter of preference right?

It is preference, I never said it was not. I was just pointing out that the notion that webmail is incapable is incorrect.

One advantage of webmail over Tbird though is access to it via multiple devices. If I am using a single device then I am using outlook as frankly it is just flatly superior in basically every way other than price. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Tbird I used to use it exclusively. I simply ceased using it as outlook is a superior standalone and webmail does everything Tbird could do and allows me access from any machine. Those that prefer to continue using it, that is fine I understand. I just also understand why it is being placed in limbo so to speak.

 

[SkribbelKat]

That's not a solution, that's a hassle that I don't have to deal with now. Why would I want that trouble? With a standalone client I can have more than one inbox open on the same screen where I can quickly and flexibly do what I need to with my mail... Like easily saving messages to local folders or network shares or automatically syncing new contacts across multiple accounts.

For home e-mail, I don't need anything that a web browser can't give me and I'm not bothered at all by opening a second or third tab. It do it all the time anyhow when I'm poking around the web so doing it for e-mail is no different. Then again my tolerance for minor annoyance is probably pretty high. For work, something a little more powerful is nice to have. Then again, I mentioned that in post 15 on the first page already.

 

[Azhar]

I've had Outlook running in the background all day... it's currently using 26 MB of RAM.

How did you get Outlook and Thunderbird over 100 MB of RAM usage?

Sounds like first time install with lots of emails from the server to me. Outlook needs several hours to index your emails especially if you have thousands of them.

At least that's all I can think of - unless he's using OEM bundled computers with bloat add-ons for Outlook like Privacy Manager and some such.

 

[Azhar]

On topic, I've never used Thunderbird myself, but when using open source email clients, I've always liked Evolution on Linux. When it comes to Windows, it's Outlook all the way.

 

[Monkey34]

I really hope they at least provide bug fixes.. i don't want to go back to outlook.

Also, web-mail is a joke.

I agree 101%

 

[beowulf7]

Crap, no!! I've been using Thunderbird for several years, I think 8 years now. WTF?! So ver. 13.x will be the last one?

 

[Staples]

I have used Windows Live Mail for years. Used to use Thunderbird back in the day but the fact that hotmail doesn't allow push clients, WLM is much better if you are using Hotmail accounts.

 

[Globox]

Crap, no!! I've been using Thunderbird for several years, I think 8 years now. WTF?! So ver. 13.x will be the last one?

kinda brings your blood to a boil doesn't it? anyone found any good alternatives yet?
spicedbird appears to be DOA at the moment...

 

[Q-BZ]

I've been very happy with Thunderbird. I'm going to continue to use it for as long as viable.

 

[Azhar]

kinda brings your blood to a boil doesn't it? anyone found any good alternatives yet?
spicedbird appears to be DOA at the moment...

Why find alternatives? You can still use Thunderbird. They're just not going to add to it, just push patches and security fixes.

 

[Globox]

Why find alternatives? You can still use Thunderbird. They're just not going to add to it, just push patches and security fixes.

that's good news at least

 

[Benzino]

I've used Thunderbird for 8 years, as long as they patch bugs and security holes I'm quite happy with not getting new functionality. That seems to be the theme around here.

 

[beowulf7]

kinda brings your blood to a boil doesn't it? anyone found any good alternatives yet?
spicedbird appears to be DOA at the moment...

Yeah, I have to admit I got quite sad when I read this thread's title on [H].

Why find alternatives? You can still use Thunderbird. They're just not going to add to it, just push patches and security fixes.

The pessimist part of me is saying that if Mozilla will stop developing Thunderbird, then eventually, they'll stop bug fixing it as well. Maybe next year, maybe 5 years later, but eventually, they'll cease all effort on TB if TB is indeed officially canceled. : \

Kind of like how MS said they'll eventually stop bug fixes on Windows XP, although they've pushed back the date a couple times.

 

[Azhar]

Yeah, I have to admit I got quite sad when I read this thread's title on [H].


The pessimist part of me is saying that if Mozilla will stop developing Thunderbird, then eventually, they'll stop bug fixing it as well. Maybe next year, maybe 5 years later, but eventually, they'll cease all effort on TB if TB is indeed officially canceled. : \

Kind of like how MS said they'll eventually stop bug fixes on Windows XP, although they've pushed back the date a couple times.

Nothing is forever. 5 years is a good life for software.