10 ms·

I have to say I think Mozilla is a complete shambles of an organisation. It must be one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of co

I have to say I think Mozilla is a complete shambles of an organisation. It must be one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. I can't actually believe this is something they're excited to post a blog about. Charity with 9 figures revenue is hiring a developer (finally) to work on a product which has 25 million users. I think Mozilla's mission goals are fantastic but something is going seriously, seriously wrong with the way they allocate resources.

brokensegue 9y ago
richest charities? not even close? look at ikea.
- joncrane 9y ago
  How is Ikea a charity?
  - abrowne 9y ago
    IIRC the brand is owned and licensed by a Dutch organization – legally a charity – created by the founder for tax avoidance purposes.
    - orliesaurus 9y ago
      Yeah it's some blackhole of companies holding each other i don't even know how to picture how all this works without pen and paper. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation
  - jonwachob91 9y ago
    Minute MBA has a really good explanation of their set-up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvxRePIv85Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvxRePIv85Y
    - orliesaurus 9y ago
      Great video, that's genius - good job to the lawyers and financial advisors
jordigh 9y ago
Is it a charity? It's the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation. Despite some explanations I've received, I've never quite understood how the money flows there. I suppose I could look up their financial statements, but my understanding is that if you donate money to Mozilla, it won't be directly used for developing software.
- dralley 9y ago
  Correct. If you donate money it goes directly to the Mozilla Foundation, whereas it is the Mozilla Corporation who hires developers to work on Firefox, etc.
- tialaramex 9y ago
  A charity can't function like a normal business. Income to the charity must be donations, and it's OK to give something of low value back but you can't just "sell" stuff and make money. Hence, "Donate $250 and get this T-shirt". But what you can do is have a _for profit_ company that makes T-shirts and sells them for $10, and then a charity which _owns_ the for-profit company and receives all of the profits as a donation from the for-profit. That's legal. So, Mozilla has a corporation to do all the stuff a charity isn't allowed to do, and then a foundation which owns the for-profit corporation. Getting paid a pile of money by a Search Engine to make their engine your default is not a charitable donation, because there's a quid pro quo, so the Mozilla Corporation takes all the Google money, for example.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I think I'd describe the situation you give as "charities can make and sell stuff for profit but have to structure themselves as owners of a for-profit in order to do so". I'm not familiar with US charity law, but it's worth noting that a charity in the UK can '"sell" stuff and make money' the key thing is what happens to the money made, it has to be directed to the charities registered aims - eg paying staff. They can't disperse profits, but they can pay phenomenal wages, some charity CEOs take home 7 figure wages [£3M was the highest wage in 2017, to a non C-grade too, https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-2017-highest-earners/special-report/article/1427306 https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-2017-highest...]. There are restrictions, charity shops can't get reductions on business rates if ordinary selling is a large part of their income, for example.
macns 9y ago
> one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. Care to elaborate? Genuinely interested.
- martinald 9y ago
  IIRC they got at $300m/year for having Google as the search provider in the top right box.
  - plushpuffin 9y ago
    Not only that, but they added a clause to their contract with Yahoo that let them get out of it while still forcing Yahoo to pay if Yahoo was purchased by another company. When Verizon bought Yahoo, Mozilla switched their default search engine back to Google. I believe they're receiving double pay from both search companies for the next year or two.
    - alexeldeib 9y ago
      I remember when the Vz-Yahoo deal was going down, and realizing how all this would play out. That they got that deal, and now are reaping double pay like that...incredible.
- hobofan 9y ago
  Every year(?) all the big search engine providers make an $$$ offer to Mozilla to become the default search engine in Firefox for anyone who newly installs it.
bhauer 9y ago
I was apprehensive of your comment at first since you start with fierce criticism of Mozilla. But on reflection, I concur that regardless of the high esteem I have for Mozilla generally, it is disconcerting how little attention Thunderbird sees despite its regular use by so many people. I've never agreed with the neglect it has received from Mozilla and, in fact, feel that Mozilla is missing an opportunity to help resuscitate and modernize email. Email, for all its faults, is among the most successful distributed protocols. And as a champion of protocols over centralized services, Mozilla should be emphatically in support of keeping email relevant, modern, and productive. Not only is Thunderbird part of that, but I'd like to see Mozilla expand their email vision to include tackling client-side encryption (ala GPG, but made user friendly).
- tajen 9y ago
  Especially since most emails worldwide aren’t decentralized since they rely on centralized webmails. As in, Google and fastmail could decide to swipe you and all proofs you’ve ever saved in your emails from the history. Thunderbird is the last way to download emails (...at least in an open format).
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    > Thunderbird is the last way to download emails Google Takeout supports one-click exporting of emails to an open format; you just need to make sure to actually do it if you're interested.
  - graton 9y ago
    You can archive your email by using something like this: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault
  - imglorp 9y ago
    Fetchmail? https://gitlab.com/fetchmail/fetchmail https://gitlab.com/fetchmail/fetchmail
    - 9y ago
tabeth 9y ago
To piggyback off this how does their corporate structure work? Mozilla Foundation, 501(c)(3) owns a for-profit wholly? What is the purpose or advantage of this organization?
- jonathanyc 9y ago
  501(c)(3) literally means the Mozilla Foundation is tax exempt. That is what the section of the law establishes. That places limits on what sorts of commercial agreements the foundation can make, among other things. Mozilla isn’t trying to tax dodge like certain other companies; the Mozilla Corporation is taxable, hires engineers, and enters into search agreements. The corporation being owned by the foundation means it is obligated to follow the foundation’s public benefit goals.
  - tabeth 9y ago
    I'm familiar with tax exemption - my question is more surrounding any benefits of the way they're organized. They, for example could just be a benefit corporation. I doubt this would be better as donations would no longer be tax exempt, among other things. I guess I'm just curious to the pros and cons of the way they're organized as of now.
    - carussell 9y ago
      Mozilla has always reaped a lot of benefits, PR-wise, out of the impression people form when they hear that it's a non-profit.
      - jonathanyc 9y ago
        Are you implying it somehow is meaningfully different? Also, I actually tried asking my technically inclined friends and none of them were aware that Mozilla was a non-profit, to my surprise. So I can’t agree with either your premise or your conclusion.
        9y ago
miles 9y ago
> It must be one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. It's not even in the top 20 of U.S.-based charities: Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation and all subsidiaries) for CY 2016 was $520M (US), as compared to $421M in 2015.[0] The Largest U.S. Charities For 2016[1] 1. United Way Worldwide, $3.708 billion. 2. Task Force for Global Health, $3.154 billion. 3. Feeding America, $2.150 billion. ... 20. American Heart Association, $634 million. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2016/12/14/the-largest-u-s-charities-for-2016/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2016/12/14/the-...
- saurik 9y ago
  When I read that comment, I thought "I see where you are coming from, but clearly you are exaggerating". Then you left your comment, which claims to disprove it, but has in fact conclusively demonstrated its truth. Mozilla is apparently competing favorably with the 20th largest charity in the entire US?! Yeah: this is like the American Heart Association saying "we finally have managed to allocate one full-time employee to look into the connection between sugar and heart issues" :/. You do realize that there are a lot of non-profits, right? I went to a meeting in Santa Barbara that was just people representing various local non-profits (or people who were thinking of starting a non-profit), and the room was packed. I remembered them saying something like "there are almost a thousand non-profits right here in Santa Barbara". I just did a quick search, and found a site saying that there are estimated 400-1000 non-profits in Santa Barbara. So yes: it is (apparently, as demonstrated by your "rebuttal"), entirely fair to say that Mozilla "is one of the richest charities in the world".
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    I was soo ready to agree with GP, in fact I upvoted them, because the rebuttal stands in my opinion (they aren't the richest in the world and they don't make 9 figures), but you are also so very right... Why the eff haven't they hired a $120k/yr rounding error to work on the application? Maybe they have tried, but no one wanted the job (especially to do solo). There could be plenty of answers to this, but I wish they would have hired a team of developers.
bad_user 9y ago
Your comment is incredibly mean. Mozilla isn't competing with other "charities", they are competing with Google, Apple and Microsoft, the world's largest corporations. The Mozilla Foundation might be a not-for-profit corporation, but they have the same constraints as normal businesses ... they have to secure reliable sources of funding, they have to preserve their resources, they have to be smart about investments, they have to pay salaries because people need to put food on the table and they have to plan further than the next quarter. And given the incredible progress of Firefox, I for one am glad that they've cut unproductive projects. The current Thunderbird is terrible. It has been a good browser, it might still have life in it, its developers might manage to evolve it and make it awesome, however I haven't been able to use it for more than a week and believe me, I tried doing so, repeatedly. I was sad to hear that Mozilla is dropping it, but then again, when I heard this news, I was already long gone as a user. Nowadays I'm split between FastMail's and Gmail's web interfaces and MailMate (freron.com), all of which are so much better for my needs, the difference ain't even funny. Seriously, a web interface and a desktop client made by one guy from Denmark are better than Thunderbird. Thunderbird basically needs a complete overhaul, but then ask its 25 million users how they feel about that, after all, if they wouldn't want the current Thunderbird, they would've switched to something else.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Either TB has been critically underfunded or it hasn’t.
- titanix2 9y ago
  They are not competing against Google, they live mainly from their funding. With the rise a Chrome and the fall of Firefox, I wounder why Google is still giving them money. Maybe the PR loss from pulling the plug would still be too big?
  - the-dude 9y ago
    The best way to control your opposition is to organize it.
  - deleted 9y ago
hartator 9y ago
Yes, specially it’s “hourly contract”. Seems a cheap way to do business.
juandazapata 9y ago
You must be fun at parties.
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong or un-fun someone else is. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
maxaf 9y ago
When I saw the headline on HN, my first thought was: "Just the one?!" A typical startup might deploy anywhere from 3 to 15 engineers on a product such as Thunderbird. Considering the amount of legacy it's saddled with, let alone the competing interests around e-mail in general, hiring a single engineer to work on this thing sounds like a token move at best, and likely a terrible waste of that person's time.
- dguo 9y ago
  I had the same initial reaction, but in the post, it says "Since we are looking to fill one or more positions.."
topspin 9y ago
I too believe they are neglecting a significant user base. Thunderbird could be a rock star product for Mozilla with many times more users (if not revenue.) It is very useful now, but the potential is immense. So why is it being neglected? There is some history here; way back when Netscape was a kitchen sink, factoring the mail client out of the browser was an important and successful decision. The mail part, Thunderbird, became persona non grata for some; it certainly lost the bulk of the mind share to the browser. However, I think the ongoing indifference is because there isn't a workable business model. Firefox is an advertising platform from which Mozilla earns hundreds of millions. It isn't clear how Thunderbird is supposed to earn.
- rurban 9y ago
  Or was it Jamie who sank the ship?
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  > However, I think the ongoing indifference is because there isn't a workable business model. Firefox is an advertising platform from which Mozilla earns hundreds of millions. It isn't clear how Thunderbird is supposed to earn. Wow, I’d wondered about that for years as well. I think you hit the nail on the head. Mozilla likes to paint itself as a charity but it won’t even allocate .1% revenue to a non-profit project that it created and millions rely on.
coliveira 9y ago
The issue is where the MONEY for Mozilla is coming from. It certainly is not from email clients. Firefox is the reason why Mozilla receives so much money, and it is obvious that they want to capitalize and concentrate their efforts on the browser. Considering that they're getting a lot of success on this effort, it is difficult to criticize them for doing this.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > The issue is where the MONEY for Mozilla is coming from. It certainly is not from email clients. Maybe Mozilla ought to change their mission statement to "Maximize revenue" then: neglecting Thunderbird does not jibe with "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." The Internet is much more than the web - email is a huge part of it. Maybe I'm being naive, but IMO, money ought to be a means to an end for Mozilla, not the end unto itself. Also, how much money did Mozilla get from IoT/FirefoxOS? I think it's close to $0, and yet they spent way more money on it than Thunderbird. I don't think your theory holds.
  - u801e 9y ago
    > The Internet is much more than the web - email is a huge part of it. The sad part is that the vast majority of people have no idea this is the case. Email? Oh I just use gmail in my browser (rather than a client with SMTP and IMAP). Discussion groups? Oh I just use Google groups or some person's private walled forum in my browser (rather than usenet with NNTP). Chat? Oh I use Slack in my browser (rather than IRC with an IRC client).
bzbarsky 9y ago
> with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google That's the Mozilla Corporation. That's not a charity. It also explicitly does not work on Thunderbird. The charity is the Mozilla Foundation. It has a lot less money than that. The developer position in question is being effectively paid by the Thunderbird Council (but officially hired by the Mozilla Foundation, which has the infrastructure to do legal compliance like payroll taxes in place). The Thunderbird Council has even less money than the Mozilla Foundation. > I can't actually believe this is something they're excited to post a blog about. The Thunderbird Council is excited to post about this, because this is the first hire they've done as far as I know. > seriously wrong with the way they allocate resources. Well, "Mozilla" (both the Corporation and the Foundation) has decided to not allocate resources to Thunderbird, period, though some Mozilla employees contribute to Thunderbird in their spare time, like any other open-source project. You can disagree with what the two Mozilla organizations are focusing on, but it's a pretty deliberate decision, not something falling out by accident or something, or a result of the organization being a "shambles".
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Perception is reality, and a list of technical reasons why Mozilla won’t modestly support TB fails to impress.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. "Mozilla" as an organization (both of the organizations involved) is providing pretty minimal support for TB, if any. They've been very upfront and explicit about it. I was addressing why the blog post exists: it's not posted by "Mozilla", but by the people who are actually supporting TB.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      This thread is about Mozilla failing to support apps which are crucial but perhaps not profitable, in contrast with their stated values. Tiny amounts in comparison to their other recent failures. Being “upfront and explicit” doesn’t magically popularize unpopular choices.
kibwen 9y ago
This whole comment is incorrect. Firstly, if you bother to read the OP, Mozilla hasn't chosen to hire anyone: "The Thunderbird Project is hiring for a software engineer! [...] Please note that while the Thunderbird project is a group of individuals separate from the Mozilla Foundation that works to further the Thunderbird email client, the Mozilla Foundation is the Project’s fiscal home." Secondly, Mozilla is not "one of the richest charities in the world"; the Mozilla Corporation may have $300 million a year in revenue, but the Mozilla Foundation, which is the charity, has revenues that are a hundredth of that. And US law is very specific about what charities may spend revenue on, and developing email client software is not on that list (nor is developing web browser software, for that matter).

brokensegue 9y ago

richest charities? not even close? look at ikea.

joncrane 9y ago
How is Ikea a charity?
- abrowne 9y ago
  IIRC the brand is owned and licensed by a Dutch organization – legally a charity – created by the founder for tax avoidance purposes.
  - orliesaurus 9y ago
    Yeah it's some blackhole of companies holding each other i don't even know how to picture how all this works without pen and paper. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation
- jonwachob91 9y ago
  Minute MBA has a really good explanation of their set-up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvxRePIv85Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvxRePIv85Y
  - orliesaurus 9y ago
    Great video, that's genius - good job to the lawyers and financial advisors

jordigh 9y ago

Is it a charity? It's the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation. Despite some explanations I've received, I've never quite understood how the money flows there. I suppose I could look up their financial statements, but my understanding is that if you donate money to Mozilla, it won't be directly used for developing software.

dralley 9y ago
Correct. If you donate money it goes directly to the Mozilla Foundation, whereas it is the Mozilla Corporation who hires developers to work on Firefox, etc.
tialaramex 9y ago
A charity can't function like a normal business. Income to the charity must be donations, and it's OK to give something of low value back but you can't just "sell" stuff and make money. Hence, "Donate $250 and get this T-shirt". But what you can do is have a _for profit_ company that makes T-shirts and sells them for $10, and then a charity which _owns_ the for-profit company and receives all of the profits as a donation from the for-profit. That's legal. So, Mozilla has a corporation to do all the stuff a charity isn't allowed to do, and then a foundation which owns the for-profit corporation. Getting paid a pile of money by a Search Engine to make their engine your default is not a charitable donation, because there's a quid pro quo, so the Mozilla Corporation takes all the Google money, for example.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I think I'd describe the situation you give as "charities can make and sell stuff for profit but have to structure themselves as owners of a for-profit in order to do so". I'm not familiar with US charity law, but it's worth noting that a charity in the UK can '"sell" stuff and make money' the key thing is what happens to the money made, it has to be directed to the charities registered aims - eg paying staff. They can't disperse profits, but they can pay phenomenal wages, some charity CEOs take home 7 figure wages [£3M was the highest wage in 2017, to a non C-grade too, https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-2017-highest-earners/special-report/article/1427306 https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-2017-highest...]. There are restrictions, charity shops can't get reductions on business rates if ordinary selling is a large part of their income, for example.

macns 9y ago

> one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. Care to elaborate? Genuinely interested.

martinald 9y ago
IIRC they got at $300m/year for having Google as the search provider in the top right box.
- plushpuffin 9y ago
  Not only that, but they added a clause to their contract with Yahoo that let them get out of it while still forcing Yahoo to pay if Yahoo was purchased by another company. When Verizon bought Yahoo, Mozilla switched their default search engine back to Google. I believe they're receiving double pay from both search companies for the next year or two.
  - alexeldeib 9y ago
    I remember when the Vz-Yahoo deal was going down, and realizing how all this would play out. That they got that deal, and now are reaping double pay like that...incredible.
hobofan 9y ago
Every year(?) all the big search engine providers make an $$$ offer to Mozilla to become the default search engine in Firefox for anyone who newly installs it.

bhauer 9y ago

I was apprehensive of your comment at first since you start with fierce criticism of Mozilla. But on reflection, I concur that regardless of the high esteem I have for Mozilla generally, it is disconcerting how little attention Thunderbird sees despite its regular use by so many people. I've never agreed with the neglect it has received from Mozilla and, in fact, feel that Mozilla is missing an opportunity to help resuscitate and modernize email. Email, for all its faults, is among the most successful distributed protocols. And as a champion of protocols over centralized services, Mozilla should be emphatically in support of keeping email relevant, modern, and productive. Not only is Thunderbird part of that, but I'd like to see Mozilla expand their email vision to include tackling client-side encryption (ala GPG, but made user friendly).

tajen 9y ago
Especially since most emails worldwide aren’t decentralized since they rely on centralized webmails. As in, Google and fastmail could decide to swipe you and all proofs you’ve ever saved in your emails from the history. Thunderbird is the last way to download emails (...at least in an open format).
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  > Thunderbird is the last way to download emails Google Takeout supports one-click exporting of emails to an open format; you just need to make sure to actually do it if you're interested.
- graton 9y ago
  You can archive your email by using something like this: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault
- imglorp 9y ago
  Fetchmail? https://gitlab.com/fetchmail/fetchmail https://gitlab.com/fetchmail/fetchmail
  - 9y ago

tabeth 9y ago

To piggyback off this how does their corporate structure work? Mozilla Foundation, 501(c)(3) owns a for-profit wholly? What is the purpose or advantage of this organization?

jonathanyc 9y ago
501(c)(3) literally means the Mozilla Foundation is tax exempt. That is what the section of the law establishes. That places limits on what sorts of commercial agreements the foundation can make, among other things. Mozilla isn’t trying to tax dodge like certain other companies; the Mozilla Corporation is taxable, hires engineers, and enters into search agreements. The corporation being owned by the foundation means it is obligated to follow the foundation’s public benefit goals.
- tabeth 9y ago
  I'm familiar with tax exemption - my question is more surrounding any benefits of the way they're organized. They, for example could just be a benefit corporation. I doubt this would be better as donations would no longer be tax exempt, among other things. I guess I'm just curious to the pros and cons of the way they're organized as of now.
  - carussell 9y ago
    Mozilla has always reaped a lot of benefits, PR-wise, out of the impression people form when they hear that it's a non-profit.
    - jonathanyc 9y ago
      Are you implying it somehow is meaningfully different? Also, I actually tried asking my technically inclined friends and none of them were aware that Mozilla was a non-profit, to my surprise. So I can’t agree with either your premise or your conclusion.
      - 9y ago

miles 9y ago

> It must be one of the richest charities in the world with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google et al. It's not even in the top 20 of U.S.-based charities: Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation and all subsidiaries) for CY 2016 was $520M (US), as compared to $421M in 2015.[0] The Largest U.S. Charities For 2016[1] 1. United Way Worldwide, $3.708 billion. 2. Task Force for Global Health, $3.154 billion. 3. Feeding America, $2.150 billion. ... 20. American Heart Association, $634 million. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2016/12/14/the-largest-u-s-charities-for-2016/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2016/12/14/the-...

saurik 9y ago
When I read that comment, I thought "I see where you are coming from, but clearly you are exaggerating". Then you left your comment, which claims to disprove it, but has in fact conclusively demonstrated its truth. Mozilla is apparently competing favorably with the 20th largest charity in the entire US?! Yeah: this is like the American Heart Association saying "we finally have managed to allocate one full-time employee to look into the connection between sugar and heart issues" :/. You do realize that there are a lot of non-profits, right? I went to a meeting in Santa Barbara that was just people representing various local non-profits (or people who were thinking of starting a non-profit), and the room was packed. I remembered them saying something like "there are almost a thousand non-profits right here in Santa Barbara". I just did a quick search, and found a site saying that there are estimated 400-1000 non-profits in Santa Barbara. So yes: it is (apparently, as demonstrated by your "rebuttal"), entirely fair to say that Mozilla "is one of the richest charities in the world".
- jermaustin1 9y ago
  I was soo ready to agree with GP, in fact I upvoted them, because the rebuttal stands in my opinion (they aren't the richest in the world and they don't make 9 figures), but you are also so very right... Why the eff haven't they hired a $120k/yr rounding error to work on the application? Maybe they have tried, but no one wanted the job (especially to do solo). There could be plenty of answers to this, but I wish they would have hired a team of developers.

bad_user 9y ago

Your comment is incredibly mean. Mozilla isn't competing with other "charities", they are competing with Google, Apple and Microsoft, the world's largest corporations. The Mozilla Foundation might be a not-for-profit corporation, but they have the same constraints as normal businesses ... they have to secure reliable sources of funding, they have to preserve their resources, they have to be smart about investments, they have to pay salaries because people need to put food on the table and they have to plan further than the next quarter. And given the incredible progress of Firefox, I for one am glad that they've cut unproductive projects. The current Thunderbird is terrible. It has been a good browser, it might still have life in it, its developers might manage to evolve it and make it awesome, however I haven't been able to use it for more than a week and believe me, I tried doing so, repeatedly. I was sad to hear that Mozilla is dropping it, but then again, when I heard this news, I was already long gone as a user. Nowadays I'm split between FastMail's and Gmail's web interfaces and MailMate (freron.com), all of which are so much better for my needs, the difference ain't even funny. Seriously, a web interface and a desktop client made by one guy from Denmark are better than Thunderbird. Thunderbird basically needs a complete overhaul, but then ask its 25 million users how they feel about that, after all, if they wouldn't want the current Thunderbird, they would've switched to something else.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Either TB has been critically underfunded or it hasn’t.
titanix2 9y ago
They are not competing against Google, they live mainly from their funding. With the rise a Chrome and the fall of Firefox, I wounder why Google is still giving them money. Maybe the PR loss from pulling the plug would still be too big?
- the-dude 9y ago
  The best way to control your opposition is to organize it.
- deleted 9y ago

hartator 9y ago

Yes, specially it’s “hourly contract”. Seems a cheap way to do business.

juandazapata 9y ago

You must be fun at parties.

dang 9y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong or un-fun someone else is. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

maxaf 9y ago

When I saw the headline on HN, my first thought was: "Just the one?!" A typical startup might deploy anywhere from 3 to 15 engineers on a product such as Thunderbird. Considering the amount of legacy it's saddled with, let alone the competing interests around e-mail in general, hiring a single engineer to work on this thing sounds like a token move at best, and likely a terrible waste of that person's time.

dguo 9y ago
I had the same initial reaction, but in the post, it says "Since we are looking to fill one or more positions.."

topspin 9y ago

I too believe they are neglecting a significant user base. Thunderbird could be a rock star product for Mozilla with many times more users (if not revenue.) It is very useful now, but the potential is immense. So why is it being neglected? There is some history here; way back when Netscape was a kitchen sink, factoring the mail client out of the browser was an important and successful decision. The mail part, Thunderbird, became persona non grata for some; it certainly lost the bulk of the mind share to the browser. However, I think the ongoing indifference is because there isn't a workable business model. Firefox is an advertising platform from which Mozilla earns hundreds of millions. It isn't clear how Thunderbird is supposed to earn.

rurban 9y ago
Or was it Jamie who sank the ship?
mixmastamyk 9y ago
> However, I think the ongoing indifference is because there isn't a workable business model. Firefox is an advertising platform from which Mozilla earns hundreds of millions. It isn't clear how Thunderbird is supposed to earn. Wow, I’d wondered about that for years as well. I think you hit the nail on the head. Mozilla likes to paint itself as a charity but it won’t even allocate .1% revenue to a non-profit project that it created and millions rely on.

coliveira 9y ago

The issue is where the MONEY for Mozilla is coming from. It certainly is not from email clients. Firefox is the reason why Mozilla receives so much money, and it is obvious that they want to capitalize and concentrate their efforts on the browser. Considering that they're getting a lot of success on this effort, it is difficult to criticize them for doing this.

sangnoir 9y ago
> The issue is where the MONEY for Mozilla is coming from. It certainly is not from email clients. Maybe Mozilla ought to change their mission statement to "Maximize revenue" then: neglecting Thunderbird does not jibe with "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all." The Internet is much more than the web - email is a huge part of it. Maybe I'm being naive, but IMO, money ought to be a means to an end for Mozilla, not the end unto itself. Also, how much money did Mozilla get from IoT/FirefoxOS? I think it's close to $0, and yet they spent way more money on it than Thunderbird. I don't think your theory holds.
- u801e 9y ago
  > The Internet is much more than the web - email is a huge part of it. The sad part is that the vast majority of people have no idea this is the case. Email? Oh I just use gmail in my browser (rather than a client with SMTP and IMAP). Discussion groups? Oh I just use Google groups or some person's private walled forum in my browser (rather than usenet with NNTP). Chat? Oh I use Slack in my browser (rather than IRC with an IRC client).

bzbarsky 9y ago

> with the billions of dollars of commission it earns from search from Google That's the Mozilla Corporation. That's not a charity. It also explicitly does not work on Thunderbird. The charity is the Mozilla Foundation. It has a lot less money than that. The developer position in question is being effectively paid by the Thunderbird Council (but officially hired by the Mozilla Foundation, which has the infrastructure to do legal compliance like payroll taxes in place). The Thunderbird Council has even less money than the Mozilla Foundation. > I can't actually believe this is something they're excited to post a blog about. The Thunderbird Council is excited to post about this, because this is the first hire they've done as far as I know. > seriously wrong with the way they allocate resources. Well, "Mozilla" (both the Corporation and the Foundation) has decided to not allocate resources to Thunderbird, period, though some Mozilla employees contribute to Thunderbird in their spare time, like any other open-source project. You can disagree with what the two Mozilla organizations are focusing on, but it's a pretty deliberate decision, not something falling out by accident or something, or a result of the organization being a "shambles".

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Perception is reality, and a list of technical reasons why Mozilla won’t modestly support TB fails to impress.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. "Mozilla" as an organization (both of the organizations involved) is providing pretty minimal support for TB, if any. They've been very upfront and explicit about it. I was addressing why the blog post exists: it's not posted by "Mozilla", but by the people who are actually supporting TB.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    This thread is about Mozilla failing to support apps which are crucial but perhaps not profitable, in contrast with their stated values. Tiny amounts in comparison to their other recent failures. Being “upfront and explicit” doesn’t magically popularize unpopular choices.

kibwen 9y ago

This whole comment is incorrect. Firstly, if you bother to read the OP, Mozilla hasn't chosen to hire anyone: "The Thunderbird Project is hiring for a software engineer! [...] Please note that while the Thunderbird project is a group of individuals separate from the Mozilla Foundation that works to further the Thunderbird email client, the Mozilla Foundation is the Project’s fiscal home." Secondly, Mozilla is not "one of the richest charities in the world"; the Mozilla Corporation may have $300 million a year in revenue, but the Mozilla Foundation, which is the charity, has revenues that are a hundredth of that. And US law is very specific about what charities may spend revenue on, and developing email client software is not on that list (nor is developing web browser software, for that matter).