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I get skeptical about acquisitions, but from what I can tell this actually seems like decent news. Thunderbird isn't acquiring K-9 to kill it or merge with an
by danShumway 4y ago
I get skeptical about acquisitions, but from what I can tell this actually seems like decent news.
Thunderbird isn't acquiring K-9 to kill it or merge with an additional product, they're buying it so they can increase its development speed and then put their name on it. That seems to me like about the best acquisition goal that they could have -- basically saying, "what exists is good, instead of building our own thing let's just pour resources into what exists."
It doesn't seem that conceptually different from what companies do with products like Blender, where sponsoring more development on an existing product is better than rolling an in-house version. The main difference being that K-9 is not independent now, the companies that do this with Blender don't end up owning Blender.
So with any acquisition there's some cause for caution, but overall I am inclined to be pretty optimistic about this. I use K-9 today, and I would like to see K-9 get more resources and to get more parity with other clients. I'm a little bit hesitant about my primary email client on my phone entering an experimental phase where its interface is going to change a lot. Again, concerns, but overall this seems like actually pretty good news.
- II2II 4y agoIf anything, the merger makes Thunderbird more accountable for the future of K-9 than they would be if they sponsored it. It is probable a net positive.
- wolverine876 4y ago> Thunderbird isn't acquiring K-9 to kill it or merge with an additional product, they're buying it so they can THunderbird is buying or acquiring K-9? Isn't K-9 FOSS? The OP says only, K-9 Mail officially joins the Thunderbird family (unless I overlooked something).
- selcuka 4y agoIt's an acqui-hire. From the announcement: > And cketti [lead dev] has already joined the full-time Thunderbird staff, bringing along his valuable expertise and experience with mobile platforms. [...] To accomplish that, we’ll devote finances and development time to continually improving K-9 Mail.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhere does it say it's an acquistion? Acqui-hires generally discard the acquired organization's product; where does it say Thunderbird is doing that? It looks like they are embracing it.
- 3np 4y agoThe distinction should be made on if the IP is transferred or not. What the acquirer actually does with that IP post-acquisition is orthogonal. There's no indication of IP transfer so it seems like this is not technically an acqui-hire, but not for the reason you're stating.
- TwoNineFive 4y agoPeople would be wise to look into the incredible amount of criticism thrown at K-9 in the last two years over the recent UI design changes. I personally see this as a way for cketti to get acqui-hired and maybe get away from K-9 Mail. The amount of hate directed towards him from the userbase (mostly justified, sorry to say) has been substantial and I can't imagine he really wants to continue dealing with that. Hopefully Thunderbird will do another UI redesign and fix the mess that was made. I ditched K-9 after the new design came out two years ago.
- spopejoy 4y agoThat's really strange. I think the UX improvements were fantastic. Given that KMail is really the only true open-source non-janky Android email client it's incredible to me that people can be so uncharitable. With the UX changes came long-desired fixes. KMail may be the only O/S mail client at this point with a fully working IMAP search (after Apple Mail screwed it up years ago). Plus they fixed a super-irritating power mgmt issue.
- xdfgh1112 4y agoI don't follow. The guy who presided over K-9 Mail's UX becoming terrible, will help improve the UX of Thunderbird?