4 ms·

The Thunderbird community is quite active, as can be seen by the activity in the tb-planning mailing list (https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/ https

The Thunderbird community is quite active, as can be seen by the activity in the tb-planning mailing list (https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/ https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb-planning/). They know they have to pivot to a more modern codebase, and have been discussing modernizing TB on a regular basis. Most of the traffic in April is about a "Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies". Go read it!

SwellJoe 10y ago
A rewrite with a skeleton crew sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Mozilla got a ground up rewrite, and even with big resources and a big team, it nearly killed Mozilla. Then again, the tools are much better than ever. Building desktop apps can move very fast with Electron (or similar) and the like. Nonetheless, I think I'm on the pessimistic side of the argument about a total rewrite. I wish them well, but I suspect it'll fizzle out, as previous similar efforts have.
- fabrice_d 10y ago
  I'm not sure which Mozilla rewrite you're talking about, but in any case I feel that rewriting TB is doable. As you say there are better tools/frameworks, and the work done by asuth on the FirefoxOS mail client and glodastrophe (https://github.com/asutherland/glodastrophe https://github.com/asutherland/glodastrophe) are good starting points.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    Oh, you're in a for a treat! Jamie Zawinski wrote wonderfully on the topic of the rewrite of Netscape Navigator (e.g. Mozilla): https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html There have been other posts about it, but that's a reasonable place to start. Spolsky has also written about the dangers of rewrites, including Mozilla as one very public case study. Interestingly, jwz also had a lot of things to say about the mail client that became Thunderbird, back when it was part of the Netscape suite. There's a really long history with the Mozilla projects, and many lessons have had to be learned multiple times. I wonder if perhaps this is one of those occasions. Then again, the best thing that ever happened to Mozilla was Firefox, and that was one lone programmer deciding to (kinda) rewrite the damned thing to be lean and mean and scuttle all of the ancillary crap that Mozilla had accrued over the years. Maybe Thunderbird needs the same treatment...but, where's the Blake Ross to do it?
    - throwaway6556 10y ago
      jwz isn't exactly a fan of "Hacker" "News". You may want to open that link in incognito mode.
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        Are you worried he can come through the internet to reap holy vengeance on all who click through to an article on his site?
        throwaway6556 10y ago
        Yes. Additionally, you'll be treated to some specially prepared, uh, eggs if you click through to his site from HN.
        SwellJoe 10y ago
        Well, that's disappointing.
Ono-Sendai 10y ago
A rewrite with web technologies... please no.
- fabrice_d 10y ago
  Why? TB UI is currently in XUL which is a markup language like... the web. A lot of the TB backend is in js, like... the web.
  - Ono-Sendai 10y ago
    well I guess the UI is alright. But I wouldn't like to see the core rewritten in JS.

SwellJoe 10y ago

A rewrite with a skeleton crew sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Mozilla got a ground up rewrite, and even with big resources and a big team, it nearly killed Mozilla. Then again, the tools are much better than ever. Building desktop apps can move very fast with Electron (or similar) and the like. Nonetheless, I think I'm on the pessimistic side of the argument about a total rewrite. I wish them well, but I suspect it'll fizzle out, as previous similar efforts have.

fabrice_d 10y ago
I'm not sure which Mozilla rewrite you're talking about, but in any case I feel that rewriting TB is doable. As you say there are better tools/frameworks, and the work done by asuth on the FirefoxOS mail client and glodastrophe (https://github.com/asutherland/glodastrophe https://github.com/asutherland/glodastrophe) are good starting points.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Oh, you're in a for a treat! Jamie Zawinski wrote wonderfully on the topic of the rewrite of Netscape Navigator (e.g. Mozilla): https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html There have been other posts about it, but that's a reasonable place to start. Spolsky has also written about the dangers of rewrites, including Mozilla as one very public case study. Interestingly, jwz also had a lot of things to say about the mail client that became Thunderbird, back when it was part of the Netscape suite. There's a really long history with the Mozilla projects, and many lessons have had to be learned multiple times. I wonder if perhaps this is one of those occasions. Then again, the best thing that ever happened to Mozilla was Firefox, and that was one lone programmer deciding to (kinda) rewrite the damned thing to be lean and mean and scuttle all of the ancillary crap that Mozilla had accrued over the years. Maybe Thunderbird needs the same treatment...but, where's the Blake Ross to do it?
  - throwaway6556 10y ago
    jwz isn't exactly a fan of "Hacker" "News". You may want to open that link in incognito mode.
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      Are you worried he can come through the internet to reap holy vengeance on all who click through to an article on his site?
      - throwaway6556 10y ago
        Yes. Additionally, you'll be treated to some specially prepared, uh, eggs if you click through to his site from HN.
        SwellJoe 10y ago
        Well, that's disappointing.

Ono-Sendai 10y ago

A rewrite with web technologies... please no.

fabrice_d 10y ago
Why? TB UI is currently in XUL which is a markup language like... the web. A lot of the TB backend is in js, like... the web.
- Ono-Sendai 10y ago
  well I guess the UI is alright. But I wouldn't like to see the core rewritten in JS.