5 ms·

Thanks for letting us know it was dead. I haven't realised it for the part few years of daily usage.

by smarinov 11y ago

pyre 11y ago
Mozilla has terminated development IIRC. This is probably what was meant.
- smarinov 11y ago
  Thanks. It wasn't meant to be sarcastic although it surely looks like it when I read it now. I was genuinely interested to find out about it since it's a program I rely on and if it won't be developed further, I'll have to look for alternatives.
cookiecaper 11y ago
I used Thunderbird daily for the better part of a decade until about 3 months ago. It's nothing personal against the project, which is currently the best serious desktop mail client available afaik. It's simply that Mozilla doesn't care about it anymore since everyone uses webmail now. Thunderbird is doing feature releases about once a year now [0], and Mozilla has pulled most (all?) of its full-time developers [1]. A few months ago, Mitchell Baker sent a message that said they were looking to detach Mozilla from the project completely, partially because it didn't have enough industry-wide impact to be worth Mozilla's resources [2]. The sad fact is that desktop mail clients are going away, and even the big projects like Thunderbird are barely limping along, which I guess is slightly nicer terminology than "pretty much dead"? [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/releases/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/releases/ [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/ https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stabi... [2] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunderbird-flies-away-from-mozilla/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunderbird-flies-away-from...
- nocman 11y ago
  Call me a dinosaur, but I'll keep using it as long as it is available. Web email clients SUCK. And there's about 10 million users that evidently have a reason to keep using it: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/12/thunderbird-active-daily-inquiries-surpass-10-million/ https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/12/thunderbird-act...
  - smarinov 11y ago
    This sounds like my words.:D So I completely agree. I cringe every time I am forced to use webmail for some reason.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- criddell 11y ago
  What makes an email client so difficult to write? I don't mean this to sound insulting, I just really don't understand where the complexity is. It seems like you should be able to get to a point where it is feature complete and all development efforts shift to maintenance mode. Or maybe I don't understand what's been going on with Thunderbird and perhaps it's been "done" for years now.
  - mixmastamyk 11y ago
    It is basically done. There could be UI refinements and updates to the occasional protocol/security change, but yeah, there's not been much innovation in email standards for a while.
    - smarinov 11y ago
      Although, to be honest, email standards are a complete mess in some regards and I suppose this make such an endeavour not as trivial as it looks on first sight. Just an example: try to create (and use) an IDN-based email address with non-ASCII characters in the local part. You will be amazed how incompatible on so many layers this actually is. I can hardly imagine there weren't dozens of similarly tricky situations where the developers of this, or any other email client for that matter, were forced to make quite serious design choices because of either ambiguity in standards, or widespread lack of support thereof.
- edsiper2 11y ago
  You should try Nylas N1
  - matzipan 11y ago
    I don't like the fact that it uses an external API. I don't like a third party (other than my mail host) to have access to my email password and messages.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

Thanks for letting us know it was dead. I haven't realised it for the part few years of daily usage.

pyre 11y ago

Mozilla has terminated development IIRC. This is probably what was meant.

smarinov 11y ago
Thanks. It wasn't meant to be sarcastic although it surely looks like it when I read it now. I was genuinely interested to find out about it since it's a program I rely on and if it won't be developed further, I'll have to look for alternatives.

cookiecaper 11y ago

I used Thunderbird daily for the better part of a decade until about 3 months ago. It's nothing personal against the project, which is currently the best serious desktop mail client available afaik. It's simply that Mozilla doesn't care about it anymore since everyone uses webmail now. Thunderbird is doing feature releases about once a year now [0], and Mozilla has pulled most (all?) of its full-time developers [1]. A few months ago, Mitchell Baker sent a message that said they were looking to detach Mozilla from the project completely, partially because it didn't have enough industry-wide impact to be worth Mozilla's resources [2]. The sad fact is that desktop mail clients are going away, and even the big projects like Thunderbird are barely limping along, which I guess is slightly nicer terminology than "pretty much dead"? [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/releases/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/releases/ [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/ https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stabi... [2] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunderbird-flies-away-from-mozilla/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunderbird-flies-away-from...

nocman 11y ago
Call me a dinosaur, but I'll keep using it as long as it is available. Web email clients SUCK. And there's about 10 million users that evidently have a reason to keep using it: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/12/thunderbird-active-daily-inquiries-surpass-10-million/ https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/12/thunderbird-act...
- smarinov 11y ago
  This sounds like my words.:D So I completely agree. I cringe every time I am forced to use webmail for some reason.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
criddell 11y ago
What makes an email client so difficult to write? I don't mean this to sound insulting, I just really don't understand where the complexity is. It seems like you should be able to get to a point where it is feature complete and all development efforts shift to maintenance mode. Or maybe I don't understand what's been going on with Thunderbird and perhaps it's been "done" for years now.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  It is basically done. There could be UI refinements and updates to the occasional protocol/security change, but yeah, there's not been much innovation in email standards for a while.
  - smarinov 11y ago
    Although, to be honest, email standards are a complete mess in some regards and I suppose this make such an endeavour not as trivial as it looks on first sight. Just an example: try to create (and use) an IDN-based email address with non-ASCII characters in the local part. You will be amazed how incompatible on so many layers this actually is. I can hardly imagine there weren't dozens of similarly tricky situations where the developers of this, or any other email client for that matter, were forced to make quite serious design choices because of either ambiguity in standards, or widespread lack of support thereof.
edsiper2 11y ago
You should try Nylas N1
- matzipan 11y ago
  I don't like the fact that it uses an external API. I don't like a third party (other than my mail host) to have access to my email password and messages.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]