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I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. Wh

by kayson 4y ago

I really love Thunderbird; I've been using it for at least a decade now. There are definitely places where it still needs improvement, after years and years. While Betterbird seems exciting in theory, the attitude of the project leader (who it seems is a banned former contributor to Mozilla Thunderbird), and honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause. The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning, as is the fact that the response seemed to be trying get out of the first temporary ban on technicalities, rather than addressing the behaviors that caused the ban to begin with. Even worse is that he violated the temporary ban. Then I saw this[1] recent email response which left yet another bad taste in my mouth. To the dev's credit, everything is very transparent, but if I learned anything about FOSS drama (see Netgate v. Wireguard, 2021) it's that the loudest side is probably not the one I want to follow. [0] https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/moz-governance.pdf https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/moz-governance.pdf [1] https://www.betterbird.eu/answer.html https://www.betterbird.eu/answer.html

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thro388 4y ago
Being banned from Mozilla is actually sort of endorsement for me :) I was worried this project is just repacked Thunderbird, with malware. This makes it more legit. Also some people do not like politics in Mozilla Corp. Firefox is supposed to be privacy focused, yet it uses Google for search, CEO salaries, scraping promising tech etc... I use Brave browser, created by a guy who was also banned from Mozilla, it works great.
- EbNar 4y ago
- n3storm 4y ago
  I cannot find any search result that slightly or strongly support your claim that "Brave browser creator was banned from Mozilla". Any links?
  - Yoric 4y ago
    It's complicated. Brave was founded by Brendan Eich, long-time Mozilla developer, long-time Mozilla CTO, briefly Mozilla CEO. Brendan Eich also happened to be an anti-gay-marriage activist and donator (afaik, only his spare time, not at work) and California law says that if you donate more than [some sum of money], you must specify your employer. So, suddenly, a few days after Brendan Eich was nominated CEO, someone on Twitter published the records of Brendan Eich's donation, phrasing it as "Mozilla is donating against gay rights", or something like that. A shitstorm started, including death threats against Mozilla employees, a highly hypocritical PR campaign by OKCupid (whose CEO was member of the same political circles as Brendan Eich) to boycott Mozilla, etc. Brendan Eich was convinced to resign from Mozilla after about two weeks of this. That's probably what GP calls "banned from Mozilla". Of course, after this, US Conservatives rephrased this into "Mozilla is persecuting Christians", so the death threats continued, just from the other side. Source: I was there.
    - paulv 4y ago
      > Brendan Eich also happened to be an anti-gay-marriage activist and donator (afaik, only his spare time, not at work) Presumably the donations were of money that he made at work.
      - selwynii 4y ago
        As if the history of the dollars used is relevant. Chase money far enough and 90% of US bills have some trace of cocaine. Should we avoid any and all donations because it's drug money?
      - naasking 4y ago
        > Presumably the donations were of money that he made at work. And? It's his money at that point, is it not? Isn't "work" trading labour for money? While working you abide by the rules and principles of your employer and outside of that, you operate by your own principles.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      > Brendan Eich also happened to be an anti-gay-marriage activist and donator AFAIK he only donated some money in 2008; I can't find anything on him being an "activist"? And 2008 was the same year Obama said "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage." Although Obama did support it a few years later (2012). And the prop 8 he donated to was actually passed, so a majority of CA residents at the time agreed with him. My point is, it was a mainstream view (and to some degree, still is, although less so). For what it's worth, I strongly support same-sex marriage, but I feel this ostracisation of anyone who disagreed is not doing the cause any good... Oh well, old drama...
throwaway81523 4y ago
Did something like that happen with ffmpeg a few years back? A huge amount of the dev work was being done by one at-the-time abrasive guy. They booted him, he forked, the ffmpeg mainline went moribund while the fork line kept getting better. Apparently he is back with mainline now. I hope things are mended but I didn't pay attention. As for Thunderbird: I use it, but it seems like its dev decisions are often wedged in rather basic ways. I have no idea how the decisions were made, but if you look at the support forum, there is a big disconnect between what the devs keep adding, and the existing pain points that users keep running into. I'd rather have a less featureful program where the dev effort went into eliminating user pain instead of adding more.
- gyan 4y ago
  > the ffmpeg mainline went moribund Never. FFmpeg was actively rebase-merging Libav changes, but not vice-versa. Libav devs wanted to focus on API clean-up and harmonization, FFmpeg usually prioritized new features. Major Libav dev activity more or less died by 2017.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > Did something like that happen with ffmpeg a few years back? A huge amount of the dev work was being done by one at-the-time abrasive guy. They booted him, he forked, the ffmpeg mainline went moribund while the fork line kept getting better. No, that’s not what happened with ffmpeg. Multiple developers forked ffmpeg in a somewhat abrasive way because they disagreed with the rest of the team. They wanted to focus on cleaning the code and changing the api while others wanted to keep working on adding features. Debian switched because the ffmpeg maintainer was part of the group. Sadly for the fork the mainline was very much more reactive and pragmatic than them. Ffmpeg kept merging all the good changes they made while they mostly refused to use ffmpeg code. Then a security auditor found that ffmpeg was good at fixing bugs while the fork did a poor job and that was the end of it. The fork was abandoned.
Zardoz84 4y ago
why was banned?
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  My guess was over something like this communication: https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.betterbird.eu/answer.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.bette... Guy seems like a bit of a dick but I suppose after quite a few years trying to effect change in an org most people get that way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    That seems very harmless.
  - chekibreki 4y ago
    Don’t see anything wrong with this post and he’s definitely not a „dick“ here. Criticism is not the same as negativity.
  - senko 4y ago
    If this is the worst, this speaks a lot more about the Thunderbird project leaders than about this person. I read this as a thoughtful, passionate, plea for project (governance) improvements. You can certainly disagree with him (I don't enough much about the project to judge either way, although his arguments ring true to my general software development instincts), but he was not attacking anyone or being a jerk.
    - jerbearito 4y ago
      No, not the worst, and not even relevant. This stuff happened in 2020, but that person linked to a message from a few months ago.
c0nducktr 4y ago
> The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning Can you describe what is concerning? I'm not going to look into email threads just because someone says there is something concerning there. What are your concerns? I'm not here to defend them, but I am lazy. If there are concerns, what are they? I figure if they're concerning enough, they can be described in a few sentences.
- andreareina 4y ago
  It's not very long, but to summarize: it is alleged that the developer violated community participation guidelines in several different ways, and thus is temporarily suspended. The developer replies that the council does not have the authority to suspend them for <reasons>; the only response to the allegations was that arguing in bad faith (only one of the several allegations) was impossible to prove.
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    They also say it's difficult to response to allegations of "assuming ill-intent". I cannot find the original violations though.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    It seems to me the email thread is the tail end of a conflict that has lasted for years, where frustration over the project direction have built up. I find it very hard to draw conclusions one way or the other from it.
runlevel1 4y ago
Brilliant jerks almost always have a net negative impact on a project when you factor in their adverse effects on their teammates. The existence of a competing fork might be healthy, though. Having competition can make your priorities a lot clearer.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  You mean like Linus or countless others did with Linux eh and a bunch of other world class open source projects? This is the lie people like you keep purporting in those VC money firehoses that have no grounds in the real world.
  - mort96 4y ago
    Well, Linus himself did think that his behavior was a big enough issue that he took serious steps to do something about it, and is now a completely different person in mailing lists. But note that your parent comment said "almost always", not "always". The Linux project isn't exactly typical.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > Linus himself did think that his behavior was a big enough issue that he took serious steps to do something about it He really did not. He simply aged and had kids. With age everything looks "not important enough to be upset by" Believe me.
      - mort96 4y ago
        I don't think that's giving him enough credit. There was a very marked moment where he wrote to mailing lists about how he realized it was a problem and took some time away from the keyboard to work on himself. I don't know what to google for to find the e-mails now, but it was very clearly intentional.
        peoplefromibiza 4y ago
Mathnerd314 4y ago
The main page on why he was banned: https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/former.html https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/former.html
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > After Mozilla outsourced contracting to an external labour provider in early 2018 and Jörg wasn't happy with the conditions there, he was kindly funded by the pEp Project. Note that Thunderbird's technical director only came on board in 2018. > The following paragraph shows how so-called cancel culture was used weaponising the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines to expel someone striving for excellence, user satisfaction and accountability within the project. > In early 2020, Thunderbird's financial and administrative home became MZLA, no longer a non-profit organisation. Hence pEp didn't want to pump money into a for-profit organisation and asked the Thunderbird project to refund Jörg's work at Thunderbird. At the beginning of 2020 the project let Jörg go, and in August 2020 he was ousted from the Thunderbird Council(), of which he had been a member since 2016, and the Thunderbird community. He was subsequently banned for life() from the entire Mozilla Community based on alleged infringements of the unacceptable conditions set out in a preliminary ban.
concinds 4y ago
The problem with open-source is that reaching responsibility or leadership positions requires as much office politics, or more, than normal corporate jobs. When a leader is incompetent, you can't talk to his boss, stirring up the community is the only way to cause change. But then you get accused of "lacking civility". Wikipedia is another example of this, where the Foundation is notorious for its flaws and for not caring about what the community thinks. "Respectful" criticism gets zero attention since people assume it must be minor, so you get backed into a corner of needing to "create some fuss" if you want to cause any change. I doubt you'll find any historical movements that actually impacted things and couldn't be called "abrasive," that's just needed to make up for power differentials.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  Our "making up for power differentials", their "abandoning civil behavior"... Not sure how I'd define the difference? There's an approach I've seen some people take where they ask "how are we supposed to win without playing underhanded?" Well, maybe you aren't. That's why the right to fork is sacred. Nobody can ever stop you from doing your own thing. It provides an escape hatch; no project disagreement is ever truly urgent, because the worst thing that can happen is that other people don't go along with what you want.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > stirring up the community is the only way to cause change. But then you get accused of "lacking civility". Exactly this. This is the key point of every community, you can't have them without conflict. If you ban conflict, you ban the social, collective, aspect and it becomes a corporate project with bosses and employees.
BeefWellington 4y ago
The bug chart thing also seems a bit misleading. If you actually click through the links it looks like there's simply more people dedicated to the task of testing dev releases. This person made a public stink about how they were ignored about getting a QA team and now it seems as though they have it? And thus they're claiming that that means the software is buggier rather than more bugs are being caught earlier in the dev cycle? And then you're pinning upstream to the very thing you're advertising as essentially a bug-riddled mess? Very confusing goal to me here.
- siliconpotato 4y ago
  Also, i see bugs like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1744944 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1744944 They remove the annoying message with a patch, but it doesn't fix the root issue, which in fact is now resolved in the main project (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429491 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429491).
FeepingCreature 4y ago
The email reprinted in that PDF makes me irrationally angry to read. I hope there's an ebuild for Betterbird soon, because after reading that I'm not sure I want anything to do with Thunderbird anymore. Quote: > * No interaction with any of the people involved. This includes > o No interactions with Thunderbird community members, paid contributors, and Thunderbird Council members. > o No interactions in any official Thunderbird channels, as well as external or unofficial channels like social media (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram). You know what that is? That's fucking weaponized shunning. You know, like cults do. If this tells me one thing, it's that if I ever run an opensource project, I need to push back aggressively against any attempts to impose a code of conduct or found a council; such organizations seem to routinely attract terrible people.
- rtpg 4y ago
  What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course. But reasonable people don’t end up getting to this point! I am a bit partial to messaging when someone is banned like this, but there are definitely cases where people will just keep on arguing about something forever and ever unless they are explicitly told to stop. And this is what that looks like, and I think is present in more or less every official OSS community Maybe this should just look like “lose access to mailing list for a bit” stuff though
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. It's like they're trying to split the world into two halves, organization members and outsiders, draw a fence around the organization membership and assume control over who is allowed to cross that fence and how. To be clear: I don't think any organization should ever have that sort of power. If it was just "banned from the ML" or whatever, I'd still be put off by the way the rest is phrased, but I'd be like "alright, that's fair enough, it's their ML." It is not their Twitter, and it is not, to be frank, "their community". You can own architecture, you can't own people. What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? From looking at this and reading the FFmpeg mail thread, I'm currently leaning towards "Avoid talking about people." Just, try to avoid talking about people, period. If a technical forum comment contains no discussion of code, at least in theory, it's probably harmful to the project. As far as I can see, this also in the same stroke removes all potential for harassment.
pndy 4y ago
> honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause I don't see arrogance in the name, it's just bit cheesy and unappealing. But I guess it's hard to come with something both catchy and at the same telling it's Thunderbird beneath but with enhancements. Postbox which is also based on Thunderbird and comes with additional features, started as freeware in beta. After the stable release a 30-day trial was introduced and those who originally pick the beta could get full version with a discount. At this moment it's a paid software that asks for email (sic) for which you'll receive the download link.
- prox 4y ago
  When Thunderbird closed shop, I went with Postbox, still do. I just need a client that works, and it has served me well.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    I decided to check them out again, as I couldn’t even remember what my issues with them were when they were new. Well, now I can say: So slow. It made me think it might be electron, but apparently it’s based on thunderbird, so I guess TB is also slow, or they are doing something wrong.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      > so I guess TB is also slow I'm a long-term TB user. I have noticed fairly severe UI lag in recent releases - say, the last couple of years. E.g. I click on a folder in the left pane, and it takes up to a second for the contents to appear and the folder be highlighted. Not every time, but often enough to cause input mistakes. Other applications running at the same time do not exhibit this lag. I haven't reported a bug; it's so noticeable, I assume someone else already has.
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        That describes my issue exactly. I guess the problem is upstream, then.
return_to_monke 4y ago
Can you give more details on netgate v wireguard? I can't really find the "drama" other than it being added and then pulled
- rainbowzootsuit 4y ago
  The pfsense kernel implementation was done while ignoring the feedback of the wireguard project creator, Jason Donenfeld. When it shipped I believe the Donenfeld had to call them out because the implementation had issues and it had been merged into the FreeBSD kernel. This is a starting point to learn about this particular drama: https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/m7vi3b/wireguard_removed_from_pfsense_ce_and_pfsense/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/m7vi3b/wireguard_r...
fuzzy2 4y ago
I’d just like to address one part, the name. I do not think it is arrogant at all. Instead, I feel it’s just… lazy. In the past, I also created userscripts for various websites. I eventually created collections called Better$Sitename, e.g. BetterHackerNews. Because, why not? The userscript (or in this case, Thunderbird fork) is certainly supposed to be an improvement. As such, BetterSomething is a very appropriate, if lazy, name. You wouldn’t create Worsebird on purpose, right? ;-)
tssva 4y ago
"The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning" Since there are no examples of the accused behaviors it is impossible to determine whether the issues raised are actually accurate. I also would consider the issues of whether a governance board is legitimately serving and whether its own processes were followed much more than technicalities.
fastball 4y ago
I don't find that email concerning at all given that there are no sources cited so I can't judge for myself whether or not abusive behavior was actually being perpetrated.
q-big 4y ago
> The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning, [...] Then I saw this[1] recent email response which left yet another bad taste in my mouth. To me, being German, these e-mails from Jörg Knobloch rather look like the directness that is often more common in Germany and German discussions. Keep in mind that Jörg Knobloch comes from this country (see http://jorgk.com/ http://jorgk.com/). In this sense I consider this accusation rather to be a cultural misunderstanding if you are not used to this style of discussion.
_yb2s 4y ago
The entire website is salty and angry... check out the comic on the front page and the features table among other things. The website is less of a legitimate project website, and more of a collection of vindictive rants against the Thunderbird project. I wouldn't trust this project with my e-mail or take it seriously with such an unprofessional and negative attitude.

by kayson 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thro388 4y ago

Being banned from Mozilla is actually sort of endorsement for me :) I was worried this project is just repacked Thunderbird, with malware. This makes it more legit. Also some people do not like politics in Mozilla Corp. Firefox is supposed to be privacy focused, yet it uses Google for search, CEO salaries, scraping promising tech etc... I use Brave browser, created by a guy who was also banned from Mozilla, it works great.

EbNar 4y ago
n3storm 4y ago
I cannot find any search result that slightly or strongly support your claim that "Brave browser creator was banned from Mozilla". Any links?
- Yoric 4y ago
  It's complicated. Brave was founded by Brendan Eich, long-time Mozilla developer, long-time Mozilla CTO, briefly Mozilla CEO. Brendan Eich also happened to be an anti-gay-marriage activist and donator (afaik, only his spare time, not at work) and California law says that if you donate more than [some sum of money], you must specify your employer. So, suddenly, a few days after Brendan Eich was nominated CEO, someone on Twitter published the records of Brendan Eich's donation, phrasing it as "Mozilla is donating against gay rights", or something like that. A shitstorm started, including death threats against Mozilla employees, a highly hypocritical PR campaign by OKCupid (whose CEO was member of the same political circles as Brendan Eich) to boycott Mozilla, etc. Brendan Eich was convinced to resign from Mozilla after about two weeks of this. That's probably what GP calls "banned from Mozilla". Of course, after this, US Conservatives rephrased this into "Mozilla is persecuting Christians", so the death threats continued, just from the other side. Source: I was there.
  - paulv 4y ago
    > Brendan Eich also happened to be an anti-gay-marriage activist and donator (afaik, only his spare time, not at work) Presumably the donations were of money that he made at work.
    - selwynii 4y ago
      As if the history of the dollars used is relevant. Chase money far enough and 90% of US bills have some trace of cocaine. Should we avoid any and all donations because it's drug money?
    - naasking 4y ago
      > Presumably the donations were of money that he made at work. And? It's his money at that point, is it not? Isn't "work" trading labour for money? While working you abide by the rules and principles of your employer and outside of that, you operate by your own principles.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > Brendan Eich also happened to be an anti-gay-marriage activist and donator AFAIK he only donated some money in 2008; I can't find anything on him being an "activist"? And 2008 was the same year Obama said "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage." Although Obama did support it a few years later (2012). And the prop 8 he donated to was actually passed, so a majority of CA residents at the time agreed with him. My point is, it was a mainstream view (and to some degree, still is, although less so). For what it's worth, I strongly support same-sex marriage, but I feel this ostracisation of anyone who disagreed is not doing the cause any good... Oh well, old drama...

throwaway81523 4y ago

Did something like that happen with ffmpeg a few years back? A huge amount of the dev work was being done by one at-the-time abrasive guy. They booted him, he forked, the ffmpeg mainline went moribund while the fork line kept getting better. Apparently he is back with mainline now. I hope things are mended but I didn't pay attention. As for Thunderbird: I use it, but it seems like its dev decisions are often wedged in rather basic ways. I have no idea how the decisions were made, but if you look at the support forum, there is a big disconnect between what the devs keep adding, and the existing pain points that users keep running into. I'd rather have a less featureful program where the dev effort went into eliminating user pain instead of adding more.

gyan 4y ago
> the ffmpeg mainline went moribund Never. FFmpeg was actively rebase-merging Libav changes, but not vice-versa. Libav devs wanted to focus on API clean-up and harmonization, FFmpeg usually prioritized new features. Major Libav dev activity more or less died by 2017.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> Did something like that happen with ffmpeg a few years back? A huge amount of the dev work was being done by one at-the-time abrasive guy. They booted him, he forked, the ffmpeg mainline went moribund while the fork line kept getting better. No, that’s not what happened with ffmpeg. Multiple developers forked ffmpeg in a somewhat abrasive way because they disagreed with the rest of the team. They wanted to focus on cleaning the code and changing the api while others wanted to keep working on adding features. Debian switched because the ffmpeg maintainer was part of the group. Sadly for the fork the mainline was very much more reactive and pragmatic than them. Ffmpeg kept merging all the good changes they made while they mostly refused to use ffmpeg code. Then a security auditor found that ffmpeg was good at fixing bugs while the fork did a poor job and that was the end of it. The fork was abandoned.

Zardoz84 4y ago

why was banned?

BeefWellington 4y ago
My guess was over something like this communication: https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.betterbird.eu/answer.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220817182407/https://www.bette... Guy seems like a bit of a dick but I suppose after quite a few years trying to effect change in an org most people get that way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  That seems very harmless.
- chekibreki 4y ago
  Don’t see anything wrong with this post and he’s definitely not a „dick“ here. Criticism is not the same as negativity.
- senko 4y ago
  If this is the worst, this speaks a lot more about the Thunderbird project leaders than about this person. I read this as a thoughtful, passionate, plea for project (governance) improvements. You can certainly disagree with him (I don't enough much about the project to judge either way, although his arguments ring true to my general software development instincts), but he was not attacking anyone or being a jerk.
  - jerbearito 4y ago
    No, not the worst, and not even relevant. This stuff happened in 2020, but that person linked to a message from a few months ago.

c0nducktr 4y ago

> The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning Can you describe what is concerning? I'm not going to look into email threads just because someone says there is something concerning there. What are your concerns? I'm not here to defend them, but I am lazy. If there are concerns, what are they? I figure if they're concerning enough, they can be described in a few sentences.

andreareina 4y ago
It's not very long, but to summarize: it is alleged that the developer violated community participation guidelines in several different ways, and thus is temporarily suspended. The developer replies that the council does not have the authority to suspend them for <reasons>; the only response to the allegations was that arguing in bad faith (only one of the several allegations) was impossible to prove.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  They also say it's difficult to response to allegations of "assuming ill-intent". I cannot find the original violations though.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  It seems to me the email thread is the tail end of a conflict that has lasted for years, where frustration over the project direction have built up. I find it very hard to draw conclusions one way or the other from it.

runlevel1 4y ago

Brilliant jerks almost always have a net negative impact on a project when you factor in their adverse effects on their teammates. The existence of a competing fork might be healthy, though. Having competition can make your priorities a lot clearer.

rjzzleep 4y ago
You mean like Linus or countless others did with Linux eh and a bunch of other world class open source projects? This is the lie people like you keep purporting in those VC money firehoses that have no grounds in the real world.
- mort96 4y ago
  Well, Linus himself did think that his behavior was a big enough issue that he took serious steps to do something about it, and is now a completely different person in mailing lists. But note that your parent comment said "almost always", not "always". The Linux project isn't exactly typical.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > Linus himself did think that his behavior was a big enough issue that he took serious steps to do something about it He really did not. He simply aged and had kids. With age everything looks "not important enough to be upset by" Believe me.
    - mort96 4y ago
      I don't think that's giving him enough credit. There was a very marked moment where he wrote to mailing lists about how he realized it was a problem and took some time away from the keyboard to work on himself. I don't know what to google for to find the e-mails now, but it was very clearly intentional.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago

Mathnerd314 4y ago

The main page on why he was banned: https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/former.html https://www.betterbird.eu/faq/former.html

ekianjo 4y ago
> After Mozilla outsourced contracting to an external labour provider in early 2018 and Jörg wasn't happy with the conditions there, he was kindly funded by the pEp Project. Note that Thunderbird's technical director only came on board in 2018. > The following paragraph shows how so-called cancel culture was used weaponising the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines to expel someone striving for excellence, user satisfaction and accountability within the project. > In early 2020, Thunderbird's financial and administrative home became MZLA, no longer a non-profit organisation. Hence pEp didn't want to pump money into a for-profit organisation and asked the Thunderbird project to refund Jörg's work at Thunderbird. At the beginning of 2020 the project let Jörg go, and in August 2020 he was ousted from the Thunderbird Council(), of which he had been a member since 2016, and the Thunderbird community. He was subsequently banned for life() from the entire Mozilla Community based on alleged infringements of the unacceptable conditions set out in a preliminary ban.

concinds 4y ago

The problem with open-source is that reaching responsibility or leadership positions requires as much office politics, or more, than normal corporate jobs. When a leader is incompetent, you can't talk to his boss, stirring up the community is the only way to cause change. But then you get accused of "lacking civility". Wikipedia is another example of this, where the Foundation is notorious for its flaws and for not caring about what the community thinks. "Respectful" criticism gets zero attention since people assume it must be minor, so you get backed into a corner of needing to "create some fuss" if you want to cause any change. I doubt you'll find any historical movements that actually impacted things and couldn't be called "abrasive," that's just needed to make up for power differentials.

FeepingCreature 4y ago
Our "making up for power differentials", their "abandoning civil behavior"... Not sure how I'd define the difference? There's an approach I've seen some people take where they ask "how are we supposed to win without playing underhanded?" Well, maybe you aren't. That's why the right to fork is sacred. Nobody can ever stop you from doing your own thing. It provides an escape hatch; no project disagreement is ever truly urgent, because the worst thing that can happen is that other people don't go along with what you want.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> stirring up the community is the only way to cause change. But then you get accused of "lacking civility". Exactly this. This is the key point of every community, you can't have them without conflict. If you ban conflict, you ban the social, collective, aspect and it becomes a corporate project with bosses and employees.

BeefWellington 4y ago

The bug chart thing also seems a bit misleading. If you actually click through the links it looks like there's simply more people dedicated to the task of testing dev releases. This person made a public stink about how they were ignored about getting a QA team and now it seems as though they have it? And thus they're claiming that that means the software is buggier rather than more bugs are being caught earlier in the dev cycle? And then you're pinning upstream to the very thing you're advertising as essentially a bug-riddled mess? Very confusing goal to me here.

siliconpotato 4y ago
Also, i see bugs like https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1744944 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1744944 They remove the annoying message with a patch, but it doesn't fix the root issue, which in fact is now resolved in the main project (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429491 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429491).

FeepingCreature 4y ago

The email reprinted in that PDF makes me irrationally angry to read. I hope there's an ebuild for Betterbird soon, because after reading that I'm not sure I want anything to do with Thunderbird anymore. Quote: > * No interaction with any of the people involved. This includes > o No interactions with Thunderbird community members, paid contributors, and Thunderbird Council members. > o No interactions in any official Thunderbird channels, as well as external or unofficial channels like social media (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram). You know what that is? That's fucking weaponized shunning. You know, like cults do. If this tells me one thing, it's that if I ever run an opensource project, I need to push back aggressively against any attempts to impose a code of conduct or found a council; such organizations seem to routinely attract terrible people.

rtpg 4y ago
What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course. But reasonable people don’t end up getting to this point! I am a bit partial to messaging when someone is banned like this, but there are definitely cases where people will just keep on arguing about something forever and ever unless they are explicitly told to stop. And this is what that looks like, and I think is present in more or less every official OSS community Maybe this should just look like “lose access to mailing list for a bit” stuff though
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. It's like they're trying to split the world into two halves, organization members and outsiders, draw a fence around the organization membership and assume control over who is allowed to cross that fence and how. To be clear: I don't think any organization should ever have that sort of power. If it was just "banned from the ML" or whatever, I'd still be put off by the way the rest is phrased, but I'd be like "alright, that's fair enough, it's their ML." It is not their Twitter, and it is not, to be frank, "their community". You can own architecture, you can't own people. What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? From looking at this and reading the FFmpeg mail thread, I'm currently leaning towards "Avoid talking about people." Just, try to avoid talking about people, period. If a technical forum comment contains no discussion of code, at least in theory, it's probably harmful to the project. As far as I can see, this also in the same stroke removes all potential for harassment.

pndy 4y ago

> honestly even the arrogance in the name itself gives me pause I don't see arrogance in the name, it's just bit cheesy and unappealing. But I guess it's hard to come with something both catchy and at the same telling it's Thunderbird beneath but with enhancements. Postbox which is also based on Thunderbird and comes with additional features, started as freeware in beta. After the stable release a 30-day trial was introduced and those who originally pick the beta could get full version with a discount. At this moment it's a paid software that asks for email (sic) for which you'll receive the download link.

prox 4y ago
When Thunderbird closed shop, I went with Postbox, still do. I just need a client that works, and it has served me well.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  I decided to check them out again, as I couldn’t even remember what my issues with them were when they were new. Well, now I can say: So slow. It made me think it might be electron, but apparently it’s based on thunderbird, so I guess TB is also slow, or they are doing something wrong.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > so I guess TB is also slow I'm a long-term TB user. I have noticed fairly severe UI lag in recent releases - say, the last couple of years. E.g. I click on a folder in the left pane, and it takes up to a second for the contents to appear and the folder be highlighted. Not every time, but often enough to cause input mistakes. Other applications running at the same time do not exhibit this lag. I haven't reported a bug; it's so noticeable, I assume someone else already has.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      That describes my issue exactly. I guess the problem is upstream, then.

return_to_monke 4y ago

Can you give more details on netgate v wireguard? I can't really find the "drama" other than it being added and then pulled

rainbowzootsuit 4y ago
The pfsense kernel implementation was done while ignoring the feedback of the wireguard project creator, Jason Donenfeld. When it shipped I believe the Donenfeld had to call them out because the implementation had issues and it had been merged into the FreeBSD kernel. This is a starting point to learn about this particular drama: https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/m7vi3b/wireguard_removed_from_pfsense_ce_and_pfsense/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/m7vi3b/wireguard_r...

fuzzy2 4y ago

I’d just like to address one part, the name. I do not think it is arrogant at all. Instead, I feel it’s just… lazy. In the past, I also created userscripts for various websites. I eventually created collections called Better$Sitename, e.g. BetterHackerNews. Because, why not? The userscript (or in this case, Thunderbird fork) is certainly supposed to be an improvement. As such, BetterSomething is a very appropriate, if lazy, name. You wouldn’t create Worsebird on purpose, right? ;-)

tssva 4y ago

"The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning" Since there are no examples of the accused behaviors it is impossible to determine whether the issues raised are actually accurate. I also would consider the issues of whether a governance board is legitimately serving and whether its own processes were followed much more than technicalities.

fastball 4y ago

I don't find that email concerning at all given that there are no sources cited so I can't judge for myself whether or not abusive behavior was actually being perpetrated.

q-big 4y ago

> The issues laid out in this[0] email thread are pretty concerning, [...] Then I saw this[1] recent email response which left yet another bad taste in my mouth. To me, being German, these e-mails from Jörg Knobloch rather look like the directness that is often more common in Germany and German discussions. Keep in mind that Jörg Knobloch comes from this country (see http://jorgk.com/ http://jorgk.com/). In this sense I consider this accusation rather to be a cultural misunderstanding if you are not used to this style of discussion.

_yb2s 4y ago

The entire website is salty and angry... check out the comic on the front page and the features table among other things. The website is less of a legitimate project website, and more of a collection of vindictive rants against the Thunderbird project. I wouldn't trust this project with my e-mail or take it seriously with such an unprofessional and negative attitude.