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I too think this one will die eventually. They should focus on core tech: - RUST - Embeddable webview and JS engine - Make Thunderbird more a priority than "som

by dz0ny 11y ago

I too think this one will die eventually. They should focus on core tech: - RUST - Embeddable webview and JS engine - Make Thunderbird more a priority than "something that we don't care about"

Grishnakh 11y ago
The Thunderbird one is somewhat understandable at least: not that many people are still using standalone email clients any more. Almost everyone's moved to webmail. Not everyone, of course: there's still some stalwarts out there using pine, for instance, but pine isn't under active development or even maintenance AFAIK, and doesn't require full-time developers to maintain it. But yeah, they really should focus on core technologies, especially the browser itself. There just aren't many alternatives: Microsoft's "Edge" (or whatever they call it today) (closed-source, corporate-controlled, Windows-only, not well supported by plugins), Apple's Safari (closed-source with FOSS engine, corporate-controlled, Win/Mac/iOS-only, not well supported by plugins), Google Chrome (open-source but not completely, corporate-controlled, privacy issues), and Google Chromium (same as Chrome but missing the closed-source stuff). Oh yeah, don't forget whatever piece-of-junk browser that Android comes with by default. We really need a non-for-profit-corporation-controlled browser that keeps up with standards and gives us open access to the web, arguably the most important communications technology now in existence. So Mozilla is really doing society a disservice by losing their focus on this and screwing around with unimportant BS like FirefoxOS, IoT, etc.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > not that many people are still using standalone email clients any more. Dozens ( hundreds? ) of millions of office workers still use Outlook. Thunderbird was starting to play in that space and have some success with S/MIME and client-certificate authentication, both aspects essential to enterprises but infeasible for web-mail.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    You have a very good point there; I actually use Thunderbird at work, using client-certificate authentication like you say. However, I thought my smallish company was just weird that way. And it doesn't seem like many companies are willing to move away from Microsoft office tools; the FOSS community has been pushing Open/LibreOffice, Thunderbird, etc. for probably 20 years now, with very little uptake. I can see how Mozilla might have finally gotten tired of it. Also, the big problem with Thunderbird is (correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't do any calendaring (I don't see it at my company), which is the "killer feature" that Outlook has. Google does it with GMail, and it works great, and it's really necessary if you're going to try to get anyone to switch from Outlook/Exchange. But FOSS has never done a very good job of coming up with a drop-in replacement for that.
    - dfc 11y ago
      Consider yourself corrected, Thunderbird supports CalDav out of the box now that lightning has been integrated.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        Interesting. Unfortunately, from the Wikipedia page about CalDAV, it appears that Microsoft Outlook and Exchange are curiously missing, and do not support this open standard at all. (There is an open-source plugin for Outlook.)

by dz0ny 11y ago

I too think this one will die eventually. They should focus on core tech: - RUST - Embeddable webview and JS engine - Make Thunderbird more a priority than "something that we don't care about"

Grishnakh 11y ago

The Thunderbird one is somewhat understandable at least: not that many people are still using standalone email clients any more. Almost everyone's moved to webmail. Not everyone, of course: there's still some stalwarts out there using pine, for instance, but pine isn't under active development or even maintenance AFAIK, and doesn't require full-time developers to maintain it. But yeah, they really should focus on core technologies, especially the browser itself. There just aren't many alternatives: Microsoft's "Edge" (or whatever they call it today) (closed-source, corporate-controlled, Windows-only, not well supported by plugins), Apple's Safari (closed-source with FOSS engine, corporate-controlled, Win/Mac/iOS-only, not well supported by plugins), Google Chrome (open-source but not completely, corporate-controlled, privacy issues), and Google Chromium (same as Chrome but missing the closed-source stuff). Oh yeah, don't forget whatever piece-of-junk browser that Android comes with by default. We really need a non-for-profit-corporation-controlled browser that keeps up with standards and gives us open access to the web, arguably the most important communications technology now in existence. So Mozilla is really doing society a disservice by losing their focus on this and screwing around with unimportant BS like FirefoxOS, IoT, etc.

dingaling 11y ago
> not that many people are still using standalone email clients any more. Dozens ( hundreds? ) of millions of office workers still use Outlook. Thunderbird was starting to play in that space and have some success with S/MIME and client-certificate authentication, both aspects essential to enterprises but infeasible for web-mail.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  You have a very good point there; I actually use Thunderbird at work, using client-certificate authentication like you say. However, I thought my smallish company was just weird that way. And it doesn't seem like many companies are willing to move away from Microsoft office tools; the FOSS community has been pushing Open/LibreOffice, Thunderbird, etc. for probably 20 years now, with very little uptake. I can see how Mozilla might have finally gotten tired of it. Also, the big problem with Thunderbird is (correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't do any calendaring (I don't see it at my company), which is the "killer feature" that Outlook has. Google does it with GMail, and it works great, and it's really necessary if you're going to try to get anyone to switch from Outlook/Exchange. But FOSS has never done a very good job of coming up with a drop-in replacement for that.
  - dfc 11y ago
    Consider yourself corrected, Thunderbird supports CalDav out of the box now that lightning has been integrated.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Interesting. Unfortunately, from the Wikipedia page about CalDAV, it appears that Microsoft Outlook and Exchange are curiously missing, and do not support this open standard at all. (There is an open-source plugin for Outlook.)