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I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I re

I will make the same comment I made on another post regarding Firefox and Mozilla: a few tips from from no one: 1. Rewrite the Mozilla mission statement. I read that and have no idea what your organization does. Mission statements seem like corporate naval gazing, but if it is honest and well written it keeps everyone focused on what you are working towards. 2. Refocus on Firefox R&D and core technologies - Firefox needs to be the best browser. It is the thing that makes the company money and makes it recognizable to the lay person. You will never be able to outspend Google, Microsoft, and Apple, but they are always going to have more competing priorities pulling their best engineers away and causing political infighting about what should be crammed into the browser. Mozilla does not have to have any of that. 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. That is it. I like some of Mozilla's side projects and I agree with the business philosophy that they should be looking to diversify their revenue stream, but I think they should all be part of two core products: Firefox and Thunderbird. Why Thunderbird? Because I think there is an undeserved niche in the business email service provider space and I think Mozilla can have a universal client on desktop, phone, tablet, and browser that is the trojan horse to up sell that product.

Miraste 6y ago
> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. I know Mozilla's non-Firefox projects aren't popular here, but if Thunderbird really wanted a niche in the business world Mozilla would need to start an email service to go with it. The age of non-integrated email clients for the average user ended a while ago.
- GordonS 6y ago
  I think you're spot on here. The only people using desktop mail clients are techies with multiple accounts (such as us HN users), and business users (who all use Outlook).
  - dsr_ 6y ago
    Half of my sales group thinks that the name of our email service is Thunderbird.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    I am not so sure. Windows default Mail app has multiple account support quite visible.
    - GordonS 6y ago
      Huh, I've been using Windows forever, and didn't know that!
  - dkarl 6y ago
    As a counterpoint, the non-techies in my family have become so used to the iPhone and iPad mail client that they look for (and find, and use) the desktop mail client on their Macs. Even my mom knows she has to "find the mail and give it my GMail" when she gets a new device.
- yabatopia 6y ago
  Agree. Mozilla should focus more on online services, nicely integrated in the browser. Online email, password management, vpn services, file storage and sharing, ... All privacy focused and with paid offerings, to make them more independent from Google.
  - hedora 6y ago
    They wouldn't even need to provide these services themselves. They could act as independent auditors in exchange for revenue (as they do for search).
- gravitas 6y ago
  I disagree - the feature they need is better calendar integration with Exchange based services and the Exchange address book (GAL). As a corporate user this is the Achilles heel and always has been for 20 years, like it or not Exchange is king of the hill in large sprawling companies and Thunderbird has always left it to 3rd party add-ons (some of which they just killed due to the extension redesign) to try and handle.
  - spacechild1 6y ago
    I recently had to buy an such an add-on (Owl), because my umiversity's IT department killed IMAP support and only offers Exchange (which is stupid, but what can you do?).
    - gravitas 6y ago
      Solutions like Owl are actually kind of nice, I have been using a similar one on my phone (AquaMail) for many years and it's worked out great. Thanks for the tip, might give it a shot - I see it's by the same author as ExQuilla which has been around for awhile as well.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > The age of non-integrated email clients for the average user ended a while ago. As someone currently beta testing Mimestream (3rd party Gmail desktop client for Mac), I couldn't disagree more. A good UI and a responsive interface makes an absolute world of difference. Gmail's web interface isn't bad, but a desktop client is just so much better to use.
  - dash2 6y ago
    But that is a "Gmail desktop client". So, it's integrated with Gmail. I use Kiwi for Gmail - same thing.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Yes, it is integrated with Google, in that it uses the Google API. However, relevant to this thread, it's not developed by Google, as Thunderbird would not be. And so Thunderbird could still provide value as such a client.
      - buran77 6y ago
        > for the average user I think this was the key. No average user I know uses an email client on their PC, outside of the corporate one. It's one more thing to take care of and average users rarely want that. It's easier on mobile where people are used with the "app" concept, not really on the PC. This is one reason why Thunderbird doesn't enjoy the kind of popularity browser based email does.
        trinix912 6y ago
        I know quite a few (older) people who are familiar with Thunerbird and use it instead of the web interface. None of them is particularly tech savvy.
        buran77 6y ago
        Of course it's not impossible. But also they must be tech savvy enough to go look for an email client where they already had the usual web interface, get to testing a few and settle on Thunderbird, then configure and stick with it. But that obviously it doesn't happen that often or else Thunderbird would boast a lot more users than it actually does. Relatively few users use it at all, and it's a reasonable assumption that the usage is higher among the more tech savvy than the average user.
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  Very much this. Gmail (well, all of Google properties anymore) is pretty terrible from a UI perspective. Not to mention the abject privacy considerations with anything Google related. I would love for Mozilla to start a competing email service that focused on performance, UI, privacy and integrated well with not only Thunderbird but other desktop mail clients.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  In my experience, the vast majority of corporate is hooked on Outlook, which is actually quite unreliable in its 365 version and constantly has annoying bugs and performance issues. It still might be a good idea to host an e-Mail service or create an Exchange pendant. I often wonder why there never has been a popular open pendant to domain controllers in Windows. I think there were multiple attempts, but I don't think anything really caught on.
  - ska 6y ago
    I suspect corporate is hooked on exchange, not outlook. Outlook 365 just goes along for the ride.
    - buran77 6y ago
      What many don't realize is the reason open/free software doesn't easily make it in the corporate zone is that there's no company behind them to put their name behind an SLA. This and integration with the ecosystem (MS has an easier time selling Windows+365+Exchange+cloudstuff). The jump from "providing an email client" to "providing a privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses" is already quite large. Being able to sell that by giving some guarantees (in signed SLA form) is yet another jump on an entirely different scale.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        Or just nobody to write the RFP. So many ways of doing business assume that something will be purchased.
        buran77 6y ago
        > Or just nobody to write the RFP Then look no further than public institutions, where (leaving everything else aside) almost every tender is public [0]. You'll never see Thunderbird in any of the submitted bids because there's no company behind it to write the bid and put its weight behind it. It's a good canary to see if a service or product has anyone capable of supporting it, or if it can be monetized in any way. This doesn't have to be the developer, just any company that can realistically push it into the corporate world. [0] https://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do https://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do
- levosmetalo 6y ago
  I would use Thunderbird in a heartbeat at my current job if it could seamlessly connect to Exchange.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    Even Microsoft seems to be moving to the cloud, but your point has been valid for a very long time.
    - ComputerGuru 6y ago
      That’s an orthogonal issue as Microsoft’s cloud email offering is still (a version of) Exchange and supports MAPI/EAS all the same.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    Besides this rather serious bug, which does not allow you to accept Exchange meeting invites from within Thunderbird [1], everything else works perfectly with this extension. [1] https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync/issues/54 https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync/issues/54
- dvdkon 6y ago
  If standalone email clients really are dead for the average user, that to me would suggest Thunderbird should focus on power-users and/or corporate deployments, not that it should shift its focus to being part of yet another "service". It's perfectly fine to make a product with an audience that isn't everyone on Earth.
- andi999 6y ago
  It should to treat special characters first (somehow cannot search for ä,ö,ü)
  - dvdkon 6y ago
    It might be because it's searching using the IMAP server, for some reason those can't often deal with non-ASCII characters. Searching with diacritics seems to work for me in locally-downloaded folders.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Well, wasn’t email designed in a time when the only supported standards were everyone’s form of Extended ASCII? So it would make sense that IMAP only supports ASCII. Heck, attachments are encoded in some base## form before being sent because the entire standard is based on text.
      - andi999 6y ago
        Here I like to quote my favorite penguin:"don't give me excuses, give me results". MS products somehow can do it, and it is a big showstopper dor adaptation in (a lot of) countries with special characters if you cannot search for the product name/customer name/project. (But maybe I remember wronfly and MS also cannot do with IMAP, so exchange it is)
    - andi999 6y ago
      Outlook manages to do that even with IMAP server (at least if I do not remember wrongly)
- edgyquant 6y ago
  Thunderbird stopped being a Mozilla project a couple years ago
SimeVidas 6y ago
What about a @firefox.com webmail service. I’d pay for it.
- bzb6 6y ago
  Way to devalue the brand. Would be like Google giving away @google.com addresses.
  - kozhevnikov 6y ago
    In countries where GMail is/was a pre-existing trademark Google is/was giving away @googlemail.com, didn't seem to devalue the brand.
    - bzb6 6y ago
      I’m not against that. They could sell @firefoxmail.com addresses
  - pushrax 6y ago
    The parallel there would be giving away @mozilla.org addresses. @firefox.com to me feels somewhere closer to @gmail.com, both being products, not companies.
    - bzb6 6y ago
      Only that Firefox is a much more valuable brand than Mozilla
taf2 6y ago
You are right but think about the following : Rust to solve the problem with memory and runtime safety a super important issue for browsers that run code from anyone Deepspeech - so Firefox can support web speech api, extremely useful api to enable accessibility There are so many more as the web as a platform grows to support an increasingly complex web... WebRTC is massive having software tools to exercise the use cases is important Just my 2 cents
Spearchucker 6y ago
#3. I agree. Amd yet Ian has this to say under "Firefox was never enough" - All encompassing: The web hosts most of our desktop applications. It should host even more of them, it should host mobile applications, it should be the universal platform. More APIs. More ways to package and present sites. (See Project Fugu) I fundamentally disagree with this one. There's just too much of a bad security track record on all 6 of the first 6 levels of the OSI model for me to use web apps for office apps. And so, as I said, I strongly agree with your #3.
tweetle_beetle 6y ago
On 2, I actually think that the right sideproject does have the ability to market Firefox and grows its userbase better than making incremental gains in the browser. For example, Firefox Send was a clever way of putting the brand in front of many people who might never have seen it. On 3, I too would love to see that happen, but, from the outside at least, the project has seen so much upheaval [1]. I don't really understand the significance of the latest change, at the start of the year [2], but hopefully it's a good sign. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird#History [2] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
yummypaint 6y ago
Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. Combined with dark patterns used by microsoft and google to steer users toward their own browsers, it's an uphill battle. I'll stick firefox and appropriate extensions on a friends computer so they can watch youtube etc completely ad free, which is a major tangible QOL improvement, but then find them watching ads in ms edge a few days later without having realized.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  It's definitely not the best browser on macOS.
  - only_friends 6y ago
    or in Windows
    - Semaphor 6y ago
      I’ll have to disagree there. It’s by far the best on Windows.
      - 1_player 6y ago
        Agreed with you, the best Firefox experience is on Windows. Hardware acceleration is on point, always very snappy rendering with no lag. Can't say the same about FF on macOS or Linux, where the experience is worse. Support for CoreAnimation compositing was added last year. Support for hardware acceleration on Linux was added this week.
  - bosswipe 6y ago
    It's so weird to me this type of comment pops up on every firefox discussion, but I use firefox on mac everyday and it's rock solid, never run into any problems.
    - 6y ago
octopoc 6y ago
I agree with points 1 and 2. I also think it's a reasonable idea for Mozilla to focus on Thunderbird the email client since there aren't a lot of great alternatives. However, when it comes to a hosted email service, there are plenty of good options already out there (e.g. Fastmail and Protonmail). The same goes for VPNs. I would much prefer Mozilla spend that money making Firefox better, or putting that money in some sort of mutual fund, the proceeds of which would fund browser development if Google ever stopped paying Mozilla. The reason is, VPN services are not hard to build. Email services are not hard to build. Browsers are hard to build, and if Firefox development ever stalled it would probably go away forever.
- bityard 6y ago
  > VPN services are not hard to build Maybe not hard to build, but they are decidedly non-trivial to maintain. Their whole purpose is to get around the business/political decisions of one organization or another, and those organizations are making it increasingly difficult to be got around. A "real" VPN company has to deal with service providers on both ends of the tunnel trying to detect and block them, compliance with complicated legal situations in every country (and state) they have a presence in, law enforcement demanding access to logs and traffic, fraudsters trying to create accounts with stolen payment methods, attackers trying to make their way into the system for a variety of nefarious reasons, and semi-regular zero-day vulnerabilities being discovered and patched throughout the whole service stack. To name just a few of the most obvious hurdles. No, I would not want to be responsible for running a VPN service in this day and age. Email hosting is not much better, for most of the same reasons as above, except that spam filtering is also a whole full-time profession unto itself as well. But yes, I agree with your point on Mozilla's lack of focus. And management competency, I would argue.
D13Fd 6y ago
I agree with your numbers 1 and 2. But I couldn't disagree more with number 3. Thunderbird is always going to be a niche product with a much smaller potential user base than Firefox. More or less every corporation and every individual user out there is a potential consumer of Firefox--every single one who uses the web. Thunderbird? Not so much. Many consumers prefer web-based e-mail clients or e-mail clients tied directly to the e-mail platform they are using (Gmail, Outlook.com, etc.). And Thunderbird is never going to replace Outlook for corporate mail. Thunderbird is only useful when you want a generic feature set, and it mostly competes with other niche mail clients. Basically, every dollar invested in Thunderbird is a dollar that could be better spent on Firefox (or MDN). If anything, they should spin off development of Thunderbird into a separate company with its own independent funding structure.
- kilburn 6y ago
  > If anything, they should spin off development of Thunderbird into a separate company with its own independent funding structure. They already did that. - In 2012 Mozilla (the corporation) started this move by announcing that "Thunderbird was not a priority for Mozilla" [1]. At this point Mozilla (corp) stopped actively investing in Thunderbird. - In 2015, Mitchel Baker made it clear that the Mozilla (corp) wanted to get rid of Thunderbird [2]. At this point the Mozilla corp started shutting down support services for the Thunderbird project. - In 2017 Thunderbird was legally moved to the Mozilla Foundation (instead of the corporation) and started surviving mostly on its own, with some minor help from the Mozilla Foundation [3]. Here Mozilla (corp), the company responsible for Firefox, already got rid of Thunderbird entirely. - In 2020, it became clear that Thunderbird can survive entirely on its own donations and could even try to provide commercial services. Thus, the Mozilla Foundation created a new "MZLA Technologies Corporation" that is now the legal entity responsible of Thunderbird [4]. MZLA Tech is not responsible for any other product that I know of. [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/ https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stabi... [2] https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/kAyVlhfEcXg/m/Eqyx1X62BQAJ https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/kAyVlhfEcXg... [3] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-hom... [4] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
kd913 6y ago
I don't think any of this fundamentally beats the main problem. That being platform control and advertising. Google advertises chrome with it's services and is the incumbent. It's also preloaded and unremovable on Android. Microsoft advertises edgium on Windows and makes it unremovable. Apple only allows webkit and safari clones on their platform. Firefox even if it's the best browser in the world would have the same problem that Linux has. Namely that Linux may be better and fit the needs, but people aren't going to bother installing it. Just look at Windows 10 and how many people are pissed at various aspects from telemetry, updates, ads and still these same people can't be bothered to flash Linux. Linux has something like 1-2% of the desktop market. The other issue with (2) is that R&D into Firefox will not return money. Not unless they choose to basically switch to blink and offload the R&D costs onto Google. Heck Microsoft themselves did the same because they realized the R&D costs weren't worth it. If Mozilla wants to stay alive, it needs to diversify and find a niche not dominated/controlled by Google, Microsoft and Apple.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Chrome didn't dethrone IE and displace FF because google advertised it, it was legitimately the best browser at the time. FF was awful, and so was IE. I keep trying FF, but I honestly haven't found it sufficiently compelling to go back. I don't mix work hardware and personal business, so I don't need multiple profiles. I prefer chrome's debug tools. Maybe we will see how manifest v3 plays out with uBlock, that might actually be enough.
  - timw4mail 6y ago
    There were definitely enough dark patterns and advertisements around Chrome to increase its market share. Chrome may have been faster, but it was also had more rendering issues early on.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    > because google advertised it For a time, chrome was bundled along side JRE updates. I went over to my mother's multiple times and saw that Chrome had, yet again, replaced Firefox. Not to mention the constant advertising/banners to switch to Chrome on all of Google's web properties.
anthony_barker 6y ago
a) I would add matrix or an open chat system. b) Allow for profit companies to leverage the base mozilla apps. c) Keep slim, smart and global...
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Seems an easier solution to me would just be to disband Mozilla and rebuild from the ashes an org that is actually interested in building a browser. Mozilla is already too bloated, too rotten and too stuck in it's ridiculous ways to salvage.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
I agree. I also think they should own the Privacy/Security/Confidentiality niche as well. Inventing and rebasing on Rust put them in a good position to provide reliable and provably-correct privacy-focused communications platforms as well. Double down on that, and pitch enterprises, govts, and other potential customers on that angle. Secure comms is an increasingly top-of-mind concern these days.
fredski42 6y ago
Nothing wrong with "We're Building a Better Internet", but they should up their game a bit by actively participating in privacy and projects to decentralize the web (again). For example, I have once envisioned a so-called 'privacy box': A physical box one put's in their own house and provides user friendly decentralized functions by installing extra software (ie using containers) for the local residents. Think filestore (like NC), mail, pihole, contacts, calender, pw vault (like bitwarden_rs), etc, etc. Mozilla could activily participate in the software and get a cut from the selling of those boxes or the sw subscriptions on top, which is probably even better.
- jfb 6y ago
  I have always wanted this "privacy box", but in a portable form -- a brick that your phone/laptop/TV/&c. uses persistent storage. No more cloud.
- pbronez 6y ago
  sounds like an Unraid appliance.
jfb 6y ago
I mean, I don't think (2) is controversial -- the issue is that there are many dimensions you can measure to determine "best". There's not a settled single definition.
simias 6y ago
You won't be able to beat Chrome by technology alone. I actually don't know how Mozilla can beat Chrome. Google has an extremely strong incentive to capture the web client market. Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. I want Firefox to win but unfortunately I just don't see a path for it. My mindset at the moment is "I'm going to use Firefox for as long as it's possible, and then I'll find the least crappy Chromium fork available". I don't know if it'll take 6 months or 6 years to get to that point but I really don't have faith in Mozilla righting the ship.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. Firefox isn't struggling on technical grounds though. It's not a charity case, it's a perfectly competent browser. Whether Firefox outperforms Chromium depends on which benchmark you use. As far as the user is concerned, they're both technically solid browsers.
  - simias 6y ago
    I wasn't talking solely about technical merits. I was also talking about marketing and everything else. Google can (and does) push Chrome aggressively through a multitude of channels. How can Mozilla beat that?
- thesuitonym 6y ago
  I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. Wouldn't it be enough to have 30% marketshare again? Or even 10% would be enough to consider Firefox a serious competitor. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that if you're not #1 you've failed. You don't need to crush every single competitor into oblivion to be successful, you just need to succeed at what you set out to do, and in Firefox's case, isn't that just to build a good browser? The only way to beat Chrome, is the same way Firefox beat IE: Someone else will have to do it.
  - 6y ago
walrus01 6y ago
> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. While I agree that Thunderbird as a standalone Windows/MacOS/Linux desktop email client is a very important project, and needs to be continued, maintained and refined, the paradigm of email has moved on somewhat since 2003. People need to be able to do more than just access email on a desktop or laptop. I'd like to see two new things under the Thunderbird/Mozilla name: a) a fully open source GPL licensed, self-hostable, webmail server application that fulfills the same functions as rainloop or roundcube, implemented in the Thunderbird name. Maybe it could have its own new GUI to run inside the browser, or it could offer an optional "traditional" GUI that is similar to the Thunderbird desktop client. This has a possibility for a natural symbiotic relationship with Firefox, as the best and most optimal web browser client to view the webmail. b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source.
- secabeen 6y ago
  > b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source. K-9 mail should satisfy these requirements. It's been slow moving development wise the last two years, but it is not dead: https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://github.com/k9mail/k-9 https://github.com/k9mail/k-9
- feanaro 6y ago
  > a Thunderbird Android email client. [...] I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source. Here it is: https://email.faircode.eu/ https://email.faircode.eu/ Unlike K-9, it is very actively developed.
- criddell 6y ago
  I've been using Thunderbird for close to 15 years and 2021 is probably the year I'll stop because of how poorly it works with Office 365. It's kind of a bummer but hard to get that upset about it because I really don't like email to start with.
mbesto 6y ago
> It is the thing that makes the company money Sort of. Google basically is what makes the company money, which is more or less indentured servitude. If it were to break away and find another way to monetize I think it becomes a very different browser.
lumost 6y ago
I really like the idea of businesses focused on their core value proposition. However, in tech, these businesses get crushed by larger platform plays see for example Firefox vs. chrome, slack vs teams, Aws vs digital ocean. There are a few factors at play here, but I’ll call out a few I’ve observed. 1) If you hire good engineers and give them autonomy, branching into new markets is cheaper than you think. “Focusing” engineers tends to just cut back on autonomy, both lowering productivity as well as limiting the quality of engineering talent one can attract. 2) Unified, integrated solutions, with great default options are preferred by nearly everyone on the market. Sure lastpass let people store passwords easily, but how many consumers bother changing the default password manager in their browser? 3) Investors recognize this pattern and funnel money to the biggest “platform” they can in any given market. I never understood how bad point solutions were from a business standpoint until I worked in the application performance monitoring space. For any given monitoring feature there are dozens to hundreds of small, high quality point solutions targeting one market niche or another - but most customers will simply purchase their preferred all in one solution and forget about the other options.
t0mmyb0y 6y ago
Mission statement has never made sense except to read into it anything you want that they may get into....
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I'll add, 4. Pocket, add daily news to it. Pocket already knows what I like, has one of the best reader mode, TTS, has millions of mobile users already and is deeply integrated within Firefox. Mozilla's values could even help it sign some deals with independent news media.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
I hate to bring it to you, but every single one of your priorities have been long rejected: Thunderbird was officially discontinued like ten years ago, Mozilla had just let go a large number of devs in early 2020 and then again a couple weeks ago, among them all Servo developers. Even if you wanted to financially support Firefox or Thunderbird development through donations, there would be no way to. Your money will go to the Moz foundation, and end up in all sorts of endeavors except the ones you care about: Moz spends money on discontinued mobile operating systems and new languages and language runtimes (Rust, WASM) nobody needs (sorry Rustees). Above all, your money likely goes to salaries and pension plans for CEOs and upper management. When it has been suggested many times that Moz just needed to put the money they got from Google into a fund to finance FF development. As to TFA's point about "sitting on the table to decide about web standards", that also hasn't worked out. It hasn't helped to keep "web standards" in check, nor did Mozilla's own contributions become part of them. All in all, Moz just acts as a fig leaf for the web end-game, pretending there's a community or some such. With respect to "web standards", our best bet could be to demand that W3C, WHATWG clear up their shit and publish formal standards (possibly in an executable language to base a new formal browser/viewer app on). The way it is now helps no-one except Google.
- pgt 6y ago
  Agree with all points except Rust and “standards”. The performance and stability of Firefox Quantum was largely driven by Rust. W3C standards are just out-of-date documentation. Do what’s good for the Web and the W3C will eventually document it.
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    W3C published editorialized snapshots of WHATWG HTML5 specs only until 2017; they're now just redirecting to WHATWG github's HEAD. SVG2 (part of HTML5) has reached CR status in 2018, and ended up to include only minor amendments vs 1.1/1.2 anyway. W3C is mostly involved in CSS specs today, with significant influence on this past decade's advances, and also source of a lot of the complexity of browsers. CSS is a primary candidate for a formal spec among web standards IMO, since HTML5 the markup language is sufficiently covered by either the procedural spec or SGML.
coding123 6y ago
I think thunderbird is a dead end.
Bokanovsky 6y ago
I've been using Thunderbird for years probably since it was created. I was going to write a message about wishing they would invest more in Thunderbird and fix a particular bug. As I was typing this it made me starting looking a bug I've found using it. So then I started Googling around to see if someone else found it. Looking at it, it appears it's been open for 3 years. But in the bug ticket they had steps to fix it. I now know few more menus in Thunderbird that I never considered clicking on. The bug now seem to be resolved and happier. But then I also wish they would trim it down or at least give me the option to turn stuff off. I don't want an events and task organiser and all this stuff. I just want a mail client. I also wish their spam filter would be more consistent and stuff keeps getting through that I've flagged and is clearly spam as it's the same message I've been receiving for the last couple of months.
coliveira 6y ago
I think that Mozilla partnership with Google has made these goals difficult to achieve. Mozilla gets its money from Google, so it is implicitly part of the monopolist game played by them. What this means is that they're happy to be second in the browser development game, and are richly rewarded for doing so.
- freebuju 6y ago
  Firefox's relationship with Google is a Rubik's cube of its. Mozilla takes way too much of Google's search money for them to stand up to Google. [0] If only another investor could save Firefox from the clutches of Google's dependency. [0]: https://hothardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-google-doj-antitrust https://hothardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-google-doj-anti...
dang 6y ago
Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. These threads are repetitive enough without literal repetition. If you want to refer to what you wrote before, a link is the way to do it. And of course you're welcome to add information that's specific to what's new in this article. There should be something different somewhere...

Miraste 6y ago

> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. I know Mozilla's non-Firefox projects aren't popular here, but if Thunderbird really wanted a niche in the business world Mozilla would need to start an email service to go with it. The age of non-integrated email clients for the average user ended a while ago.

GordonS 6y ago
I think you're spot on here. The only people using desktop mail clients are techies with multiple accounts (such as us HN users), and business users (who all use Outlook).
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Half of my sales group thinks that the name of our email service is Thunderbird.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  I am not so sure. Windows default Mail app has multiple account support quite visible.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    Huh, I've been using Windows forever, and didn't know that!
- dkarl 6y ago
  As a counterpoint, the non-techies in my family have become so used to the iPhone and iPad mail client that they look for (and find, and use) the desktop mail client on their Macs. Even my mom knows she has to "find the mail and give it my GMail" when she gets a new device.
yabatopia 6y ago
Agree. Mozilla should focus more on online services, nicely integrated in the browser. Online email, password management, vpn services, file storage and sharing, ... All privacy focused and with paid offerings, to make them more independent from Google.
- hedora 6y ago
  They wouldn't even need to provide these services themselves. They could act as independent auditors in exchange for revenue (as they do for search).
gravitas 6y ago
I disagree - the feature they need is better calendar integration with Exchange based services and the Exchange address book (GAL). As a corporate user this is the Achilles heel and always has been for 20 years, like it or not Exchange is king of the hill in large sprawling companies and Thunderbird has always left it to 3rd party add-ons (some of which they just killed due to the extension redesign) to try and handle.
- spacechild1 6y ago
  I recently had to buy an such an add-on (Owl), because my umiversity's IT department killed IMAP support and only offers Exchange (which is stupid, but what can you do?).
  - gravitas 6y ago
    Solutions like Owl are actually kind of nice, I have been using a similar one on my phone (AquaMail) for many years and it's worked out great. Thanks for the tip, might give it a shot - I see it's by the same author as ExQuilla which has been around for awhile as well.
falcolas 6y ago
> The age of non-integrated email clients for the average user ended a while ago. As someone currently beta testing Mimestream (3rd party Gmail desktop client for Mac), I couldn't disagree more. A good UI and a responsive interface makes an absolute world of difference. Gmail's web interface isn't bad, but a desktop client is just so much better to use.
- dash2 6y ago
  But that is a "Gmail desktop client". So, it's integrated with Gmail. I use Kiwi for Gmail - same thing.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Yes, it is integrated with Google, in that it uses the Google API. However, relevant to this thread, it's not developed by Google, as Thunderbird would not be. And so Thunderbird could still provide value as such a client.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > for the average user I think this was the key. No average user I know uses an email client on their PC, outside of the corporate one. It's one more thing to take care of and average users rarely want that. It's easier on mobile where people are used with the "app" concept, not really on the PC. This is one reason why Thunderbird doesn't enjoy the kind of popularity browser based email does.
      - trinix912 6y ago
        I know quite a few (older) people who are familiar with Thunerbird and use it instead of the web interface. None of them is particularly tech savvy.
        buran77 6y ago
        Of course it's not impossible. But also they must be tech savvy enough to go look for an email client where they already had the usual web interface, get to testing a few and settle on Thunderbird, then configure and stick with it. But that obviously it doesn't happen that often or else Thunderbird would boast a lot more users than it actually does. Relatively few users use it at all, and it's a reasonable assumption that the usage is higher among the more tech savvy than the average user.
Zelphyr 6y ago
Very much this. Gmail (well, all of Google properties anymore) is pretty terrible from a UI perspective. Not to mention the abject privacy considerations with anything Google related. I would love for Mozilla to start a competing email service that focused on performance, UI, privacy and integrated well with not only Thunderbird but other desktop mail clients.
raxxorrax 6y ago
In my experience, the vast majority of corporate is hooked on Outlook, which is actually quite unreliable in its 365 version and constantly has annoying bugs and performance issues. It still might be a good idea to host an e-Mail service or create an Exchange pendant. I often wonder why there never has been a popular open pendant to domain controllers in Windows. I think there were multiple attempts, but I don't think anything really caught on.
- ska 6y ago
  I suspect corporate is hooked on exchange, not outlook. Outlook 365 just goes along for the ride.
  - buran77 6y ago
    What many don't realize is the reason open/free software doesn't easily make it in the corporate zone is that there's no company behind them to put their name behind an SLA. This and integration with the ecosystem (MS has an easier time selling Windows+365+Exchange+cloudstuff). The jump from "providing an email client" to "providing a privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses" is already quite large. Being able to sell that by giving some guarantees (in signed SLA form) is yet another jump on an entirely different scale.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Or just nobody to write the RFP. So many ways of doing business assume that something will be purchased.
      - buran77 6y ago
        > Or just nobody to write the RFP Then look no further than public institutions, where (leaving everything else aside) almost every tender is public [0]. You'll never see Thunderbird in any of the submitted bids because there's no company behind it to write the bid and put its weight behind it. It's a good canary to see if a service or product has anyone capable of supporting it, or if it can be monetized in any way. This doesn't have to be the developer, just any company that can realistically push it into the corporate world. [0] https://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do https://ted.europa.eu/TED/main/HomePage.do
levosmetalo 6y ago
I would use Thunderbird in a heartbeat at my current job if it could seamlessly connect to Exchange.
- phkahler 6y ago
  Even Microsoft seems to be moving to the cloud, but your point has been valid for a very long time.
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    That’s an orthogonal issue as Microsoft’s cloud email offering is still (a version of) Exchange and supports MAPI/EAS all the same.
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  Besides this rather serious bug, which does not allow you to accept Exchange meeting invites from within Thunderbird [1], everything else works perfectly with this extension. [1] https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync/issues/54 https://github.com/jobisoft/TbSync/issues/54
dvdkon 6y ago
If standalone email clients really are dead for the average user, that to me would suggest Thunderbird should focus on power-users and/or corporate deployments, not that it should shift its focus to being part of yet another "service". It's perfectly fine to make a product with an audience that isn't everyone on Earth.
andi999 6y ago
It should to treat special characters first (somehow cannot search for ä,ö,ü)
- dvdkon 6y ago
  It might be because it's searching using the IMAP server, for some reason those can't often deal with non-ASCII characters. Searching with diacritics seems to work for me in locally-downloaded folders.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Well, wasn’t email designed in a time when the only supported standards were everyone’s form of Extended ASCII? So it would make sense that IMAP only supports ASCII. Heck, attachments are encoded in some base## form before being sent because the entire standard is based on text.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Here I like to quote my favorite penguin:"don't give me excuses, give me results". MS products somehow can do it, and it is a big showstopper dor adaptation in (a lot of) countries with special characters if you cannot search for the product name/customer name/project. (But maybe I remember wronfly and MS also cannot do with IMAP, so exchange it is)
  - andi999 6y ago
    Outlook manages to do that even with IMAP server (at least if I do not remember wrongly)
edgyquant 6y ago
Thunderbird stopped being a Mozilla project a couple years ago

SimeVidas 6y ago

What about a @firefox.com webmail service. I’d pay for it.

bzb6 6y ago
Way to devalue the brand. Would be like Google giving away @google.com addresses.
- kozhevnikov 6y ago
  In countries where GMail is/was a pre-existing trademark Google is/was giving away @googlemail.com, didn't seem to devalue the brand.
  - bzb6 6y ago
    I’m not against that. They could sell @firefoxmail.com addresses
- pushrax 6y ago
  The parallel there would be giving away @mozilla.org addresses. @firefox.com to me feels somewhere closer to @gmail.com, both being products, not companies.
  - bzb6 6y ago
    Only that Firefox is a much more valuable brand than Mozilla

taf2 6y ago

You are right but think about the following : Rust to solve the problem with memory and runtime safety a super important issue for browsers that run code from anyone Deepspeech - so Firefox can support web speech api, extremely useful api to enable accessibility There are so many more as the web as a platform grows to support an increasingly complex web... WebRTC is massive having software tools to exercise the use cases is important Just my 2 cents

Spearchucker 6y ago

#3. I agree. Amd yet Ian has this to say under "Firefox was never enough" - All encompassing: The web hosts most of our desktop applications. It should host even more of them, it should host mobile applications, it should be the universal platform. More APIs. More ways to package and present sites. (See Project Fugu) I fundamentally disagree with this one. There's just too much of a bad security track record on all 6 of the first 6 levels of the OSI model for me to use web apps for office apps. And so, as I said, I strongly agree with your #3.

tweetle_beetle 6y ago

On 2, I actually think that the right sideproject does have the ability to market Firefox and grows its userbase better than making incremental gains in the browser. For example, Firefox Send was a clever way of putting the brand in front of many people who might never have seen it. On 3, I too would love to see that happen, but, from the outside at least, the project has seen so much upheaval [1]. I don't really understand the significance of the latest change, at the start of the year [2], but hopefully it's a good sign. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird#History [2] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

yummypaint 6y ago

Firefox is already the best browser and has been for a long time. The problem is that most laypeople don't even know it exists. Combined with dark patterns used by microsoft and google to steer users toward their own browsers, it's an uphill battle. I'll stick firefox and appropriate extensions on a friends computer so they can watch youtube etc completely ad free, which is a major tangible QOL improvement, but then find them watching ads in ms edge a few days later without having realized.

leadingthenet 6y ago
It's definitely not the best browser on macOS.
- only_friends 6y ago
  or in Windows
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    I’ll have to disagree there. It’s by far the best on Windows.
    - 1_player 6y ago
      Agreed with you, the best Firefox experience is on Windows. Hardware acceleration is on point, always very snappy rendering with no lag. Can't say the same about FF on macOS or Linux, where the experience is worse. Support for CoreAnimation compositing was added last year. Support for hardware acceleration on Linux was added this week.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  It's so weird to me this type of comment pops up on every firefox discussion, but I use firefox on mac everyday and it's rock solid, never run into any problems.
  - 6y ago

octopoc 6y ago

I agree with points 1 and 2. I also think it's a reasonable idea for Mozilla to focus on Thunderbird the email client since there aren't a lot of great alternatives. However, when it comes to a hosted email service, there are plenty of good options already out there (e.g. Fastmail and Protonmail). The same goes for VPNs. I would much prefer Mozilla spend that money making Firefox better, or putting that money in some sort of mutual fund, the proceeds of which would fund browser development if Google ever stopped paying Mozilla. The reason is, VPN services are not hard to build. Email services are not hard to build. Browsers are hard to build, and if Firefox development ever stalled it would probably go away forever.

bityard 6y ago
> VPN services are not hard to build Maybe not hard to build, but they are decidedly non-trivial to maintain. Their whole purpose is to get around the business/political decisions of one organization or another, and those organizations are making it increasingly difficult to be got around. A "real" VPN company has to deal with service providers on both ends of the tunnel trying to detect and block them, compliance with complicated legal situations in every country (and state) they have a presence in, law enforcement demanding access to logs and traffic, fraudsters trying to create accounts with stolen payment methods, attackers trying to make their way into the system for a variety of nefarious reasons, and semi-regular zero-day vulnerabilities being discovered and patched throughout the whole service stack. To name just a few of the most obvious hurdles. No, I would not want to be responsible for running a VPN service in this day and age. Email hosting is not much better, for most of the same reasons as above, except that spam filtering is also a whole full-time profession unto itself as well. But yes, I agree with your point on Mozilla's lack of focus. And management competency, I would argue.

D13Fd 6y ago

I agree with your numbers 1 and 2. But I couldn't disagree more with number 3. Thunderbird is always going to be a niche product with a much smaller potential user base than Firefox. More or less every corporation and every individual user out there is a potential consumer of Firefox--every single one who uses the web. Thunderbird? Not so much. Many consumers prefer web-based e-mail clients or e-mail clients tied directly to the e-mail platform they are using (Gmail, Outlook.com, etc.). And Thunderbird is never going to replace Outlook for corporate mail. Thunderbird is only useful when you want a generic feature set, and it mostly competes with other niche mail clients. Basically, every dollar invested in Thunderbird is a dollar that could be better spent on Firefox (or MDN). If anything, they should spin off development of Thunderbird into a separate company with its own independent funding structure.

kilburn 6y ago
> If anything, they should spin off development of Thunderbird into a separate company with its own independent funding structure. They already did that. - In 2012 Mozilla (the corporation) started this move by announcing that "Thunderbird was not a priority for Mozilla" [1]. At this point Mozilla (corp) stopped actively investing in Thunderbird. - In 2015, Mitchel Baker made it clear that the Mozilla (corp) wanted to get rid of Thunderbird [2]. At this point the Mozilla corp started shutting down support services for the Thunderbird project. - In 2017 Thunderbird was legally moved to the Mozilla Foundation (instead of the corporation) and started surviving mostly on its own, with some minor help from the Mozilla Foundation [3]. Here Mozilla (corp), the company responsible for Firefox, already got rid of Thunderbird entirely. - In 2020, it became clear that Thunderbird can survive entirely on its own donations and could even try to provide commercial services. Thus, the Mozilla Foundation created a new "MZLA Technologies Corporation" that is now the legal entity responsible of Thunderbird [4]. MZLA Tech is not responsible for any other product that I know of. [1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/ https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stabi... [2] https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/kAyVlhfEcXg/m/Eqyx1X62BQAJ https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.governance/c/kAyVlhfEcXg... [3] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-hom... [4] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

kd913 6y ago

I don't think any of this fundamentally beats the main problem. That being platform control and advertising. Google advertises chrome with it's services and is the incumbent. It's also preloaded and unremovable on Android. Microsoft advertises edgium on Windows and makes it unremovable. Apple only allows webkit and safari clones on their platform. Firefox even if it's the best browser in the world would have the same problem that Linux has. Namely that Linux may be better and fit the needs, but people aren't going to bother installing it. Just look at Windows 10 and how many people are pissed at various aspects from telemetry, updates, ads and still these same people can't be bothered to flash Linux. Linux has something like 1-2% of the desktop market. The other issue with (2) is that R&D into Firefox will not return money. Not unless they choose to basically switch to blink and offload the R&D costs onto Google. Heck Microsoft themselves did the same because they realized the R&D costs weren't worth it. If Mozilla wants to stay alive, it needs to diversify and find a niche not dominated/controlled by Google, Microsoft and Apple.

zdragnar 6y ago
Chrome didn't dethrone IE and displace FF because google advertised it, it was legitimately the best browser at the time. FF was awful, and so was IE. I keep trying FF, but I honestly haven't found it sufficiently compelling to go back. I don't mix work hardware and personal business, so I don't need multiple profiles. I prefer chrome's debug tools. Maybe we will see how manifest v3 plays out with uBlock, that might actually be enough.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  There were definitely enough dark patterns and advertisements around Chrome to increase its market share. Chrome may have been faster, but it was also had more rendering issues early on.
- com2kid 6y ago
  > because google advertised it For a time, chrome was bundled along side JRE updates. I went over to my mother's multiple times and saw that Chrome had, yet again, replaced Firefox. Not to mention the constant advertising/banners to switch to Chrome on all of Google's web properties.

anthony_barker 6y ago

a) I would add matrix or an open chat system. b) Allow for profit companies to leverage the base mozilla apps. c) Keep slim, smart and global...

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Seems an easier solution to me would just be to disband Mozilla and rebuild from the ashes an org that is actually interested in building a browser. Mozilla is already too bloated, too rotten and too stuck in it's ridiculous ways to salvage.

SkyMarshal 6y ago

I agree. I also think they should own the Privacy/Security/Confidentiality niche as well. Inventing and rebasing on Rust put them in a good position to provide reliable and provably-correct privacy-focused communications platforms as well. Double down on that, and pitch enterprises, govts, and other potential customers on that angle. Secure comms is an increasingly top-of-mind concern these days.

fredski42 6y ago

Nothing wrong with "We're Building a Better Internet", but they should up their game a bit by actively participating in privacy and projects to decentralize the web (again). For example, I have once envisioned a so-called 'privacy box': A physical box one put's in their own house and provides user friendly decentralized functions by installing extra software (ie using containers) for the local residents. Think filestore (like NC), mail, pihole, contacts, calender, pw vault (like bitwarden_rs), etc, etc. Mozilla could activily participate in the software and get a cut from the selling of those boxes or the sw subscriptions on top, which is probably even better.

jfb 6y ago
I have always wanted this "privacy box", but in a portable form -- a brick that your phone/laptop/TV/&c. uses persistent storage. No more cloud.
pbronez 6y ago
sounds like an Unraid appliance.

jfb 6y ago

I mean, I don't think (2) is controversial -- the issue is that there are many dimensions you can measure to determine "best". There's not a settled single definition.

simias 6y ago

You won't be able to beat Chrome by technology alone. I actually don't know how Mozilla can beat Chrome. Google has an extremely strong incentive to capture the web client market. Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. I want Firefox to win but unfortunately I just don't see a path for it. My mindset at the moment is "I'm going to use Firefox for as long as it's possible, and then I'll find the least crappy Chromium fork available". I don't know if it'll take 6 months or 6 years to get to that point but I really don't have faith in Mozilla righting the ship.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> Whatever Mozilla can do to make Firefox more popular, Google can outspend them by a factor 10 and do more, or better, or both. Firefox isn't struggling on technical grounds though. It's not a charity case, it's a perfectly competent browser. Whether Firefox outperforms Chromium depends on which benchmark you use. As far as the user is concerned, they're both technically solid browsers.
- simias 6y ago
  I wasn't talking solely about technical merits. I was also talking about marketing and everything else. Google can (and does) push Chrome aggressively through a multitude of channels. How can Mozilla beat that?
thesuitonym 6y ago
I wonder why Firefox even has to beat Chrome. Wouldn't it be enough to have 30% marketshare again? Or even 10% would be enough to consider Firefox a serious competitor. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that if you're not #1 you've failed. You don't need to crush every single competitor into oblivion to be successful, you just need to succeed at what you set out to do, and in Firefox's case, isn't that just to build a good browser? The only way to beat Chrome, is the same way Firefox beat IE: Someone else will have to do it.
- 6y ago

walrus01 6y ago

> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses. While I agree that Thunderbird as a standalone Windows/MacOS/Linux desktop email client is a very important project, and needs to be continued, maintained and refined, the paradigm of email has moved on somewhat since 2003. People need to be able to do more than just access email on a desktop or laptop. I'd like to see two new things under the Thunderbird/Mozilla name: a) a fully open source GPL licensed, self-hostable, webmail server application that fulfills the same functions as rainloop or roundcube, implemented in the Thunderbird name. Maybe it could have its own new GUI to run inside the browser, or it could offer an optional "traditional" GUI that is similar to the Thunderbird desktop client. This has a possibility for a natural symbiotic relationship with Firefox, as the best and most optimal web browser client to view the webmail. b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source.

secabeen 6y ago
> b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source. K-9 mail should satisfy these requirements. It's been slow moving development wise the last two years, but it is not dead: https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://github.com/k9mail/k-9 https://github.com/k9mail/k-9
feanaro 6y ago
> a Thunderbird Android email client. [...] I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source. Here it is: https://email.faircode.eu/ https://email.faircode.eu/ Unlike K-9, it is very actively developed.
criddell 6y ago
I've been using Thunderbird for close to 15 years and 2021 is probably the year I'll stop because of how poorly it works with Office 365. It's kind of a bummer but hard to get that upset about it because I really don't like email to start with.

mbesto 6y ago

> It is the thing that makes the company money Sort of. Google basically is what makes the company money, which is more or less indentured servitude. If it were to break away and find another way to monetize I think it becomes a very different browser.

lumost 6y ago

I really like the idea of businesses focused on their core value proposition. However, in tech, these businesses get crushed by larger platform plays see for example Firefox vs. chrome, slack vs teams, Aws vs digital ocean. There are a few factors at play here, but I’ll call out a few I’ve observed. 1) If you hire good engineers and give them autonomy, branching into new markets is cheaper than you think. “Focusing” engineers tends to just cut back on autonomy, both lowering productivity as well as limiting the quality of engineering talent one can attract. 2) Unified, integrated solutions, with great default options are preferred by nearly everyone on the market. Sure lastpass let people store passwords easily, but how many consumers bother changing the default password manager in their browser? 3) Investors recognize this pattern and funnel money to the biggest “platform” they can in any given market. I never understood how bad point solutions were from a business standpoint until I worked in the application performance monitoring space. For any given monitoring feature there are dozens to hundreds of small, high quality point solutions targeting one market niche or another - but most customers will simply purchase their preferred all in one solution and forget about the other options.

t0mmyb0y 6y ago

Mission statement has never made sense except to read into it anything you want that they may get into....

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I'll add, 4. Pocket, add daily news to it. Pocket already knows what I like, has one of the best reader mode, TTS, has millions of mobile users already and is deeply integrated within Firefox. Mozilla's values could even help it sign some deals with independent news media.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

I hate to bring it to you, but every single one of your priorities have been long rejected: Thunderbird was officially discontinued like ten years ago, Mozilla had just let go a large number of devs in early 2020 and then again a couple weeks ago, among them all Servo developers. Even if you wanted to financially support Firefox or Thunderbird development through donations, there would be no way to. Your money will go to the Moz foundation, and end up in all sorts of endeavors except the ones you care about: Moz spends money on discontinued mobile operating systems and new languages and language runtimes (Rust, WASM) nobody needs (sorry Rustees). Above all, your money likely goes to salaries and pension plans for CEOs and upper management. When it has been suggested many times that Moz just needed to put the money they got from Google into a fund to finance FF development. As to TFA's point about "sitting on the table to decide about web standards", that also hasn't worked out. It hasn't helped to keep "web standards" in check, nor did Mozilla's own contributions become part of them. All in all, Moz just acts as a fig leaf for the web end-game, pretending there's a community or some such. With respect to "web standards", our best bet could be to demand that W3C, WHATWG clear up their shit and publish formal standards (possibly in an executable language to base a new formal browser/viewer app on). The way it is now helps no-one except Google.

pgt 6y ago
Agree with all points except Rust and “standards”. The performance and stability of Firefox Quantum was largely driven by Rust. W3C standards are just out-of-date documentation. Do what’s good for the Web and the W3C will eventually document it.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  W3C published editorialized snapshots of WHATWG HTML5 specs only until 2017; they're now just redirecting to WHATWG github's HEAD. SVG2 (part of HTML5) has reached CR status in 2018, and ended up to include only minor amendments vs 1.1/1.2 anyway. W3C is mostly involved in CSS specs today, with significant influence on this past decade's advances, and also source of a lot of the complexity of browsers. CSS is a primary candidate for a formal spec among web standards IMO, since HTML5 the markup language is sufficiently covered by either the procedural spec or SGML.

coding123 6y ago

I think thunderbird is a dead end.

Bokanovsky 6y ago

I've been using Thunderbird for years probably since it was created. I was going to write a message about wishing they would invest more in Thunderbird and fix a particular bug. As I was typing this it made me starting looking a bug I've found using it. So then I started Googling around to see if someone else found it. Looking at it, it appears it's been open for 3 years. But in the bug ticket they had steps to fix it. I now know few more menus in Thunderbird that I never considered clicking on. The bug now seem to be resolved and happier. But then I also wish they would trim it down or at least give me the option to turn stuff off. I don't want an events and task organiser and all this stuff. I just want a mail client. I also wish their spam filter would be more consistent and stuff keeps getting through that I've flagged and is clearly spam as it's the same message I've been receiving for the last couple of months.

coliveira 6y ago

I think that Mozilla partnership with Google has made these goals difficult to achieve. Mozilla gets its money from Google, so it is implicitly part of the monopolist game played by them. What this means is that they're happy to be second in the browser development game, and are richly rewarded for doing so.

freebuju 6y ago
Firefox's relationship with Google is a Rubik's cube of its. Mozilla takes way too much of Google's search money for them to stand up to Google. [0] If only another investor could save Firefox from the clutches of Google's dependency. [0]: https://hothardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-google-doj-antitrust https://hothardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-google-doj-anti...

dang 6y ago

Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. These threads are repetitive enough without literal repetition. If you want to refer to what you wrote before, a link is the way to do it. And of course you're welcome to add information that's specific to what's new in this article. There should be something different somewhere...