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I mentioned this in another thread... but Mozilla/Thunderbird (not MZLA) should really concentrate more on feature-rich support. Specifically better calendar a

I mentioned this in another thread... but Mozilla/Thunderbird (not MZLA) should really concentrate more on feature-rich support. Specifically better calendar and provider integration. Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. As much as I like some of the mail hosts out there, for some, the ability to self-host is big. The various pieces and software you have to cobble together are cumbersome, and even then, you don't get anything close to what Exchange+Outlook gives you. It would be nice to see Thunderbird fill this space, it used to be what I would consider a best of breed email & newsgroup client, now, I'm not sure I would say anything close to that.

chrisseaton 7y ago
> MZLA Why's Mozilla got a stock ticker if it isn't publicly traded?
- jszymborski 7y ago
  It's the name of the new company meant to steward Thunderbird according to the post.
- komon 7y ago
  It doesn't, that's the name of the corporation taking over maintenance of Thunderbird listed in the article.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Oh right - but I looked up https://stocktwits.com/symbol/MZLA https://stocktwits.com/symbol/MZLA and it's from 2010 so I don't know if that's the new company but it says Mozilla.
    - dna_polymerase 7y ago
      Given that this is Stocktwits, I assume the page you linked was auto-generated after enough people used the cashtag ($-followed by Symbol) on Twitter.
jszymborski 7y ago
I really like that second idea, although it might be more productive as a partnership with an existing solution like Open-Xchange, Zimbra, or Citadel.
phonon 7y ago
Have you tried https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/calendar/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/calendar/ ?
- tracker1 7y ago
  I have in the past... now how/where do I sync this calendar, and does it allow me to share read-only data with other people?
discreditable 7y ago
I think Thunderbird resources are best spent being the best email client it can. It currently lacks mail merge support, and mapi support is bad/not-working. There is an add-on for mail merge, but as they go to webextensions its future (and that of many other add-ons) are uncertain. This affects other add-ons such as enigmail too.
- jeltz 7y ago
  I would like if they focused on performance and stability of current features, e.g. by improving their IMAP code and moving to SQLite storage to improve stability and fix corruption of mailboxes.
  - discreditable 7y ago
    I think that would be great too. For now they seem set on maildir as the future of mail storage.
- Chirael 7y ago
  Absolutely, I agree 100%. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, I think they should stay focused on being a great email client. Based on the comments on this page it sounds like there’s certainly enough work to go around just with that goal.
samdunham 7y ago
A near 100% drop-in replacement for Exchange server is kind of the holy grail of messaging/collaboration. I was looking at something that claimed to be that (or close) many, many years ago when I was doing consulting, so I could try to save my clients some money. But nothing had all of the features they wanted or was as seamless as they wanted it to be. I don't remember what the software was called, but it pre-dated Zimbra (which I think I've installed once to dink around with). I think this is more difficult now, with the move to cloud services like O365 and Google Suite. But having a self-hosted, Outlook compatible, Exchange substitute would be great.
- floren 7y ago
  > I was looking at something that claimed to be that (or close) many, many years ago when I was doing consulting, so I could try to save my clients some money. But nothing had all of the features they wanted or was as seamless as they wanted it to be. I don't remember what the software was called, but it pre-dated Zimbra Ximian's Evolution?
- conception 7y ago
  Ran Zimbra for a number of years and it was fine as an exchange replacement. Only reason we moved is we wanted SaaS and didn't want to maintain it anymore.
- tracker1 7y ago
  That has been my experience as well... these days Office365 is often the best option, with Google Docs/Gmail, Fastmail and a handful of others coming close. I'd generally favor o365 currently, but would love to see Moz deliver a great alternative. They definitely have most of the expertise to do so (even if UI/UX could use some improvements).
Silhouette 7y ago
Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. As much as I like some of the mail hosts out there, for some, the ability to self-host is big. The various pieces and software you have to cobble together are cumbersome, and even then, you don't get anything close to what Exchange+Outlook gives you. I would love for someone to do this, so we could have a nice, self-hosted store for our vital data but still access that data from all our devices, over VPN, etc. The problem, as always with these things, is who that someone would be. While many HN readers might appreciate the potential advantages, I fear the target market for such a product is significantly smaller than for Thunderbird, which for better or worse is itself aiming at a relatively small minority of users in the era of Google Mail and friends. For anything it's worth, I'd contribute financially to such a project personally and so would my businesses, since it would be a significant benefit in each case.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I mostly agree... I do think it's more of an "if you build it" scenario. Thunderbird isn't big as a mail client, because there isn't the level of integration with either existing providers and/or a self-hosted option. o365/exchange, gmail/gdocs/gcalendar and fastmail are probably the big three providers that should have seamless integration at this point. A SaaS option from Moz would be nice, as would a self-hosted option. I bring these up in line with Moz's efforts to get VPN subscribers, they could likewise do groupware.
jcranmer 7y ago
> Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. I quite disagree here. Servers and clients are very different in their architecture and implementation, and you are going to have very little opportunity for code reuse or even knowledge sharing between the people implementing the client and those implementing the server [1]. I don't think you can turn email servers into a profitable revenue stream unless you do full SaaS, and I don't think Mozilla is really capable of putting in the resources to make a Mozilla Email SaaS feasible. A better bet would be to try to put together something to more effectively cobble together the existing open-source email server components and do the installation and support as a service, but I again don't think that Mozilla is the organization best-placed to provide that service. [1] The big exception here is LDAP. But Thunderbird doesn't even really maintain its own LDAP library--it should move to WinLdap/OpenLDAP depending on OS.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  > Servers and clients are very different in their architecture and implementation True, but also the only way to really know how to develop a good one is to have experience with building the other.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> MZLA Why's Mozilla got a stock ticker if it isn't publicly traded?

jszymborski 7y ago
It's the name of the new company meant to steward Thunderbird according to the post.
komon 7y ago
It doesn't, that's the name of the corporation taking over maintenance of Thunderbird listed in the article.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Oh right - but I looked up https://stocktwits.com/symbol/MZLA https://stocktwits.com/symbol/MZLA and it's from 2010 so I don't know if that's the new company but it says Mozilla.
  - dna_polymerase 7y ago
    Given that this is Stocktwits, I assume the page you linked was auto-generated after enough people used the cashtag ($-followed by Symbol) on Twitter.

jszymborski 7y ago

I really like that second idea, although it might be more productive as a partnership with an existing solution like Open-Xchange, Zimbra, or Citadel.

phonon 7y ago

Have you tried https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/calendar/ https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/calendar/ ?

tracker1 7y ago
I have in the past... now how/where do I sync this calendar, and does it allow me to share read-only data with other people?

discreditable 7y ago

I think Thunderbird resources are best spent being the best email client it can. It currently lacks mail merge support, and mapi support is bad/not-working. There is an add-on for mail merge, but as they go to webextensions its future (and that of many other add-ons) are uncertain. This affects other add-ons such as enigmail too.

jeltz 7y ago
I would like if they focused on performance and stability of current features, e.g. by improving their IMAP code and moving to SQLite storage to improve stability and fix corruption of mailboxes.
- discreditable 7y ago
  I think that would be great too. For now they seem set on maildir as the future of mail storage.
Chirael 7y ago
Absolutely, I agree 100%. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, I think they should stay focused on being a great email client. Based on the comments on this page it sounds like there’s certainly enough work to go around just with that goal.

samdunham 7y ago

A near 100% drop-in replacement for Exchange server is kind of the holy grail of messaging/collaboration. I was looking at something that claimed to be that (or close) many, many years ago when I was doing consulting, so I could try to save my clients some money. But nothing had all of the features they wanted or was as seamless as they wanted it to be. I don't remember what the software was called, but it pre-dated Zimbra (which I think I've installed once to dink around with). I think this is more difficult now, with the move to cloud services like O365 and Google Suite. But having a self-hosted, Outlook compatible, Exchange substitute would be great.

floren 7y ago
> I was looking at something that claimed to be that (or close) many, many years ago when I was doing consulting, so I could try to save my clients some money. But nothing had all of the features they wanted or was as seamless as they wanted it to be. I don't remember what the software was called, but it pre-dated Zimbra Ximian's Evolution?
conception 7y ago
Ran Zimbra for a number of years and it was fine as an exchange replacement. Only reason we moved is we wanted SaaS and didn't want to maintain it anymore.
tracker1 7y ago
That has been my experience as well... these days Office365 is often the best option, with Google Docs/Gmail, Fastmail and a handful of others coming close. I'd generally favor o365 currently, but would love to see Moz deliver a great alternative. They definitely have most of the expertise to do so (even if UI/UX could use some improvements).

Silhouette 7y ago

Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. As much as I like some of the mail hosts out there, for some, the ability to self-host is big. The various pieces and software you have to cobble together are cumbersome, and even then, you don't get anything close to what Exchange+Outlook gives you. I would love for someone to do this, so we could have a nice, self-hosted store for our vital data but still access that data from all our devices, over VPN, etc. The problem, as always with these things, is who that someone would be. While many HN readers might appreciate the potential advantages, I fear the target market for such a product is significantly smaller than for Thunderbird, which for better or worse is itself aiming at a relatively small minority of users in the era of Google Mail and friends. For anything it's worth, I'd contribute financially to such a project personally and so would my businesses, since it would be a significant benefit in each case.

tracker1 7y ago
I mostly agree... I do think it's more of an "if you build it" scenario. Thunderbird isn't big as a mail client, because there isn't the level of integration with either existing providers and/or a self-hosted option. o365/exchange, gmail/gdocs/gcalendar and fastmail are probably the big three providers that should have seamless integration at this point. A SaaS option from Moz would be nice, as would a self-hosted option. I bring these up in line with Moz's efforts to get VPN subscribers, they could likewise do groupware.

jcranmer 7y ago

> Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. I quite disagree here. Servers and clients are very different in their architecture and implementation, and you are going to have very little opportunity for code reuse or even knowledge sharing between the people implementing the client and those implementing the server [1]. I don't think you can turn email servers into a profitable revenue stream unless you do full SaaS, and I don't think Mozilla is really capable of putting in the resources to make a Mozilla Email SaaS feasible. A better bet would be to try to put together something to more effectively cobble together the existing open-source email server components and do the installation and support as a service, but I again don't think that Mozilla is the organization best-placed to provide that service. [1] The big exception here is LDAP. But Thunderbird doesn't even really maintain its own LDAP library--it should move to WinLdap/OpenLDAP depending on OS.

SahAssar 7y ago
> Servers and clients are very different in their architecture and implementation True, but also the only way to really know how to develop a good one is to have experience with building the other.