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Thunderbird Is Thriving: Our 2022 Financial Report

334 points by ktosobcy 3y ago

ktosobcy 3y ago
(if only Firefox were getting funding directly…)
- Multicomp 3y ago
  I was about to say, if this is _too_ successful, Thunderbird may find themselves with a target on their back, so Mozilla doesn't have to keep fielding questions from users about how they can fund Firefox directly instead of general donations. Only joking (I hope).
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Maybe Thunderbird will spin off a light, snappy little web browser with excellent quality-of-life features and a no-nonsense UI.
    - AwaAwa 3y ago
      I'd buy that for a dollar. Maybe even 2. Really does feel like the fire has gone out of the fox.
      - yamtaddle 3y ago
        I've been disliking Firefox since before it was cool (the last versions I really loved were somewhere in the 1.x series, and I used to set my theme on later versions to something in the 0.x range, though I forget exactly which one)
    - donio 3y ago
      They could call it Phoenix. Or Firebird.
      - spopejoy 3y ago
        Or Iceweasel
- Sytten 3y ago
  I donate to Thunderbird but not firefox because of all the bullshit moves I saw them do over the past few years
  - tristan957 3y ago
    You cannot donate to Firefox. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation, which is owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corporation shares profits with the Foundation, so that the Foundation can advance its goals.
- scns 3y ago
  You can pay for their VPN (Mullvad rebrand) or email masking service called Relay.
  - ktosobcy 3y ago
    No, I can't as I don't live in supported country. Nevertheless - does it go directly to Firefox or to Mozilla?
fswd 3y ago
Please fix search. It's completely broken and unusable IMHO.
- ycombinete 3y ago
  I keep trying to use Thunderbird as my Fastmail client, but whenever I need to do a search I end up switching to the http client in frustration. Maybe I just don’t understand how search works in Thunderbird though!
- krastanov 3y ago
  While we are complaining about search-related issues: I constantly end up with messages that I know I have received, that the search might or might not list, but that then can not be opened until I run "repair folder". Happens with multiple accounts with different providers. Still better than all alternatives I have tried though :D
  - tapper 3y ago
    They are working on a big UI over hall so this mite get fixt. you can test it out in the beta
  - prox 3y ago
    I use Postbox which basically runs on Thunderbird I believe but has some professional tooling : https://www.postbox-inc.com/ https://www.postbox-inc.com/ I started using it when Thunderbird went under the previous time.
    - krembo 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - nitins_jakta 3y ago
      Too bad there's no Linux port.
      - 3y ago
tapper 3y ago
Why does there have to be a Android and IOS ports of Thunderbird? Just stick to desktop. This happens all the time now.
- ktosobcy 3y ago
  I guess they want to have "universal experience" and I don't blame them. Though, in case of Android they are going to rebrand k9-mail AFAIK.
  - tapper 3y ago
    May be it's just me, but I don't use email the same on my phone as I do desktop. I have 5 accounts on my desktop but just the one witch is my mane on my phone. Aps these days cant just stay good at one thing like ff being good on windows. They want to be good on Windows, Linux, BSD, Android so on and so on.
    - ktosobcy 3y ago
      I have same accounts in k9mail and use it to quickly filter mail - quite handy. Longer replies I do from the computer. As for FX - i do use it on macos and it works perfect for me.
    - gostsamo 3y ago
      Sometimes I must open some stupid mail on my phone because an app needs it for verification or some other nonsense. I'd like to have an accessible option to do it. also an nvda user/donor
- parl_match 3y ago
  Why does there have to be a Thunderbird at all? The people building Thunderbird are clearly motivated to build FOSS/Libre communication tools for people. As more and more people move to using Android and ios as their primary computing environment, the existence of accessible FOSS/Libre tools such as Thunderbird becomes more important than ever. So, if they're interested or dedicated to building open tools for people to use, they can choose where to go, whether you like it or not. :) e: By the way, have you donated to Thunderbird? If you are able to pay for the software you use, especially when it seeks to be a force for good, then you should. Even $20 a year goes a long way for an organization like this.
waboremo 3y ago
An average of $21 is very impressive considering Thunderbird's position. I believe Wikimedia averages to about $15. Although I suppose its position is probably a large part of the comfort to donate more.
- ijlx 3y ago
  I'd be interested to know what their median donation is, assuming $21 is the mean (which it seems to be). I wonder to what extent that number is inflated by a few big donors (it might not be, I'm just curious).
  - franole 3y ago
    There is a new response from Jason Evangelho about this: > -Our top 3 donors last year gave 3000 EUR, 2500 EUR, and several that gave 1000 (in both Euros and US dollars) > -We had ~76 donations last year that were $500 USD equivalent or above (these were made by individuals or small businesses that use Thunderbird, and totals less than 1% of donations) > -Donations higher than $100 USD (or equivalent) were only 5% of total donations. > -43% of donations in 2022 were between $5 – $20 USD. > In our view, we don’t have mega-donors. We have normal, awesome people
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piecerough 3y ago
Such a huge influx of capital with no mention of Generative AI features reading & writing emails for you. Impressive!
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Heh, that didn't occur to me. Indeed, that's a cause for celebration! If they had included such goals, though, I'd be likely to stop donating money to them.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    I'd be kind of okay with it if the code all ran locally.
    - darkwater 3y ago
      Exactly. Actually it would be a giant differentiator to everything else.
  - sankhao 3y ago
    I wouldn't mind if the mail client stored local embeddings of my email contents to enable a good search function.
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      What practical benefit does that offer over existing (synonym-aware) keyword and phrase search approaches? The corpus of one’s mailbox is too small a dataset to draw conclusion from, surely? Not to mention being far slower to query.
      - yazaddaruvala 3y ago
        The really difficult parts about keyword search are tokenization, normalization, and synonym selection. Especially keeping them up to date. The uses of search never know about any of this, but as the developer these things need to be top of mind. Using embeddings basically lets the AI configure those things for you and auto updates when the AI updates. You could also use the embeddings for far more advanced things like in LLMs, but the basic version that is just “better keyword search” is also valuable. > Not to mention being far slower to query. KNN on the embeddings is not obviously slower to query. In production using AWS ElasticSearch, for a very large search index, my team saw no meaningful change to latency when using embeddings instead.
chrismeller 3y ago
I’m always amazed at the staff numbers for these kinds of projects. I’m glad things are going well for them, but that really seems like a high employee count for such a simple project.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  From 15 to 24 this year for the entire company making best desktop email? That's a reasonable number that could be higher. Facebook had 80,000-90,000 employees before the purge
  - threeseed 3y ago
    Meta has a number of apps e.g. Instagram and services e.g. Workplace, hundred million times more users, revenue in the tens of billions and a highly labour intensive content moderation system. The comparison is silly. Far better would be with mobile app developers who typically have much smaller teams than 24. And so I would agree that their headcount seems excessive for what is being delivered.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      Thunderbird has at least 20 million users. You think meta has trillions of customers? Those outsourced content mod teams are not included in that headcount either
      - rtpg 3y ago
        Thunderbird $4 million in revenue. Of which probably a percentage of that is not recurring? That's the number that actually matters.
        TrueSlacker0 3y ago
        Does donations really count as true revenue? It feels wrong to use the word revenue when it's not really making money.
neilv 3y ago
When you follow the link on that page to donate, select monthly recurring donation, and go to enter payment info, they then try to upsell you (with a checkbox checked by default) to "Cover transaction costs". (When you click the info icon: "When you cover our transaction costs, you're covering both our processing and donation platform costs.") It's easier for a non-profit charity to be pushy about fund-raising, because it's for a good cause. But that's not Mozilla. Facets of Mozilla are run more like a for-profit tech company, including layoffs of engineers while executives still demand high compensation. Pushy comes across differently. People want to tip the waiter, and would feel positively about that, at the same time they'd feel negatively about a restaurant owner trying to sneak a made-up fee onto the bill.
- robocat 3y ago
  I suspect it is an industry trend in donations - I saw this yesterday when donating (which I don’t often do). I think they asked for $17.50 “transaction costs” on a $150 donation. I wish there was an anonymising service in New Zealand so I could donate without giving my contact details. No, I don’t want to be added to a list - there is a whole seedy underbelly to the industry of charity.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  You should probably be directing your outrage at the platforms that are taking those costs, not the non-profit who are effectively forced into paying them. The biggest shame of the cryptocurrency debacle is that it was never able to make any real headway into the stranglehold that the Visa/Mastercard duopoly has on online payments.
throw7 3y ago
Implement jmap then!
- ktosobcy 3y ago
  Is it all that useful for regular desktop mail client? I can understand it's huge usefulness in browser or on mobile but on the desktop? Yes, it simplifies mail management, but (clunky) IMAP is already and works just fine?
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    > but (clunky) IMAP is already and works just fine Well, 'works just fine' is not what I would say about IMAP, more like 'works most of the time'. But in the end, IMAP is just for accessing mailbox and mail. JMAP also covers (besides server side actions and settings) calendar and contacts. If you remember, there are a separate protocols for these now (CalDAV, CardDAV) which are totally unrelated to IMAP. A desktop client with a full JMAP support would be close by the functionality to Outlook connected to Exchange, which is a thing many desire, especially in corporate settings.
    - ktosobcy 3y ago
      I'm aware and use those protocols. What's the benefit of bundling IMAP/SMTP/Cal|CardDAV into single JAMP protocol here? Those separate protocols work great and if someone only needs mail can only use IMAP/SMTP?
      - justsomehnguy 3y ago
        > Those separate protocols work great Nope, they are not. > What's the benefit of bundling Even not running around and configuring a separate IMAP, CalDAV, CardDAV, SMTP account settings would be a solid improvement. Runing over one endpoint instead of 3 would be a fine addition too. Not using a ridiculous STARTTLS would be a good thing too. > if someone only needs mail can only use IMAP/SMTP? That's not a protocol question, it's a MUA interface and configuration question.
RachelF 3y ago
I've been having to use both Outlook 365 and Thunderbird in the last few years. Thunderbird is way better than Outlook.
- zokier 3y ago
  Outlooks selling point is really its integration to Exchange; it doesn't even try to be stellar general purpose mail client.
  - ktosobcy 3y ago
    What does that offer, i.e. what are the benefits?
    - tormeh 3y ago
      It'll remind you of meetings, for example.
      - ktosobcy 3y ago
        My regular calendar with CalDav does the same?
    - criddell 3y ago
      Support from Microsoft.
    - 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
      Enterprise features. Want to grant edit access to an online document for specific authenticated viewers using a particular matrix of browser and OS? Click share, edit permissions, send. Want to see if someone is on vacation? Put their name into the "To:" list, it'll show you their current OOO message so you can skip composing the mail. Want to grant read-only access to a particular group of users from a particular part of an AD forest to a specific shared mailbox? Couple clicks and you're done. OIDC auth with MFA so users can use a 3rd party service to index and access mail and files? Click, click, click.
aidenn0 3y ago
It seems like every (non-mac user) I know who doesn't use a web client uses Thunderbird. Am I the only user of Evolution?
- uneekname 3y ago
  How do you like it?
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    I love it. I previously used Sylpheed (and Claws, a fork of Sylpheed), but eventually got to the point where I had to reply to HTML e-mail and that moved me back to Evolution. In addition, its Exchange backend is excellent, which is good because I can't convince O365 to send me calendar invites over IMAP.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Sylpheed user here.
- slondr 3y ago
  I use aerc at work, and occasionally annoy my coworkers by asking them to send me an email that is readable in a terminal.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    I use bower (fed with isync) in addition to Evolution (because near-instant searching of 15 years of e-mails is rather handy). My coworkers always send email that is readable in a terminal, but apparently customers have this thing called "money" which means they get to dictate whether or not I use HTML e-mail...
- thristian 3y ago
  I tried using Evolution a few years ago, but repeatedly hit problems where if I deleted text while composing an email, "Undo" would not restore it. I filed a bug, which was eventually closed with "we've changed some things around that might have affected this issue, please try to reproduce when the next version is released". Looking at their issue tracker[1], this kind of thing seems to be a common complaint, rarely resolved with an actual direct bug fix. Most charitably, I assume that Evolution is designed for a use-case or workflow I don't have. [1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/?search=undo&sort=created_date&state=closed&first_page_size=20 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/?search=un...
samspenc 3y ago
Fascinating, per the post, they were struggling in most of 2021 and 2022, and there were some last minute contributions in December 2022 that bumped up their 2022 numbers. Curious what outreach or activity they did in Dec 2022 that led to the influx of funds.
- giraj 3y ago
  They explain that they added an "in-app donations appeal" at the end of 2022, so I imagine that would be it.
- gostsamo 3y ago
  I have the habit of donating around christmas including to TB. I suppose that I'm not the only one.
rhaway84773 3y ago
Ignoring Thunderbird was a massive fail on the part of Mozilla. The email space absolutely took off right as Mozilla narrowed its focus entirely onto Firefox. You had a bunch of mail clients revolutionizing the space and then being sold for good money.
- PedroBatista 3y ago
  After the browser took off, ignoring and missing things became the main objectives of Mozilla. Flush with Google money, the voices of highly technical people with a mission were overpowered by the voices of professional non-technical people with an agenda. I'm not even getting into the woke stuff, but Mozilla saw themselves as the "Open [insert new stuff]" stewards. They saw companies constantly building moats and ( understandably ) wanted to create an "open" alternative: Remember the phone OS stuff? Pocket? Servo? Rust managed to survive before the axe came. Raindrop, VR stuff, even IoT.. Since they lost almost all relevance in the browser "market", management somehow "managed" to re-frame their identity to a company that creates cool projects about the latest trend and then lets them rot since they have no traction and eventually closes them. Google does that too, but Google makes billions of dollars and can support all that "exploration", Mozilla doesn't and it will rot away until they close operations. I use Firefox since the Phoenix days, and I like it btw.
deviantbit 3y ago
I used Thunderbird, and I donate. It is worth it.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
I use it (once in a while) and I try to donate regularly just to keep it afloat, it's needed. It's really powerful in many ways but god it's UX is still awful, especially the configurations. The search if pathetic!
- redeeman 3y ago
  im curious which features you find powerful? as email clients go, it seems to be almost as basic as it comes, with many before it having far far more features. unless you mean the extensions?
- slondr 3y ago
  You'll be happy and/or sad to learn that basically the entire UX has been rewritten - the rewrite is live in the beta/daily branch. I've found it to be somewhat crash prone, for now, but the overall look and feel is a huge improvement.
  - zhte415 3y ago
    Super news. I wasn't aware of this, so looked it up. Here's the Thunderbird blog for 'supernova' https://blog.thunderbird.net/tag/supernova/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/tag/supernova/
  - akvadrako 3y ago
    I've been using the beta version for a few years and would say the UI changes have been trivial and it still lacks a coherent design. Like the new left navigation bar, which just opens a tab at the top.
    - tecleandor 3y ago
      I don't particularly hate it (I'm used to it after years and years and the changes have been very progressive, probably) except for the change in the "Get Mail" button. It used to be a big clear button with text, and now it's just a small arrow. Old: https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/media/uploads/gallery/images/2021-10-11-13-20-13-5076f8.png New (upper left corner) : https://149677182.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/thundebrird-planned-redesign.jpg
desro 3y ago
This is good news to me. I gave Thunderbird another go just last week, as I wanted a way to reliably get my email OUT of MS Office (work), Proton, Gmail, etc. so I could have a local copy in a format (or formats) that I choose. After I downloaded everything I ran `notmuch` on the lot. My end goal is to have some kind of locally hosted knowledgebase with nearly-instantaneous full-text search. Haven't figured out what comes next, but I'm grateful that Thunderbird made it pretty painless to get this far.
- _xnmw 3y ago
  I regularly dump all my Proton and Gmail to a local macOS folder and use DevonThink for nearly-instantaneous full-text search.
- renonce 3y ago
  That's also what I use Thunderbird for. Taking control of my emails and importing/exporting them between email providers. I wonder if there is a version of such software that can run on a cloud server though.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
Yay! I haven't used Thunderbird much in a few years, but I'm very glad they're still around. Last I tried it, I was able to pay for a cheap plug-in to authenticate to Outlook365 and retrieve corporate mail through Thunderbird for a Linux laptop pilot for work. Very glad people still have an alternative to the Enterprise Empire.
knadh 3y ago
Daily Thunderbird user for about 17 years. Has always worked well. The recent UI improvements are nice (on the eyes), but, I’m so used to the UI/UX, it just blends into the background.
dboreham 3y ago
Oh, interesting - this is actually about Thunderbird. I was expecting some AI startup founded by people too young to know there was already a Thunderbird.
toastercat 3y ago
I like Thunderbird, but on Linux I finally switched to Evolution because Thunderbird was an absolute RAM and CPU hog, and also, Google Calendar integration was flakey as hell. Thunderbird would randomly decide to not notify me of an event or decide to notify me way too late.
- sph 3y ago
  I would use Evolution if it didn't look and feel like the version found in early GNOME 2 Ubuntu, when they still used to ship installation CDs for free. Aesthetics is as important a feature as supporting IMAP or having decent search. Which is why I'm still stuck with Fastmail's webmail, because neither Evolution nor Thunderbird seem to satisfy these criteria.
  - toastercat 3y ago
    I disagree and definitely think IMAP support and good search is more important than aesthetics here, but I also don't think Evolution looks so bad[1]. [1] https://i.vgy.me/hLJIAz.png https://i.vgy.me/hLJIAz.png
trzy 3y ago
Use it out of habit on Windows but been annoyed for years at how slow the UI is. I frequently open an email and start typing a reply and have to wait 10 seconds because it locks up for some unknown reason. I’ve never been able to figure out what’s going on and this has plagued the app for a good decade at least.
coding123 3y ago
Apple's Mail app is constantly losing it's connection to my various different work email accounts, but the annoying thing isn't that it's losing it, it's that it's not doing a good job of either telling me, or having me re-auth. I should probably give Thunderbird another try - specially since they're funding is up.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Great news. Except for the part where they used K9 instead of FairMail as a foundation for thunderbird mobile. K9 has way too many bugs and the ergonomics is terrible compared to fairmail, and both are available on fdroid.
- ktosobcy 3y ago
  Heh, I tried fairmail a couple of times and always came back to k9 as I found fairmail quite cluncky and odd to use :-)
valeg 3y ago
I like Thunderbird and use it all the time (it is ideal for my workflow with a couple of add-ons installed) but the developers should focus more on the application's performance. It loves to bog down my system.
- ktosobcy 3y ago
  AFAIR they are trying to fix internals as well, but it takes time considering lots of crust acumulated over the years?
dugite-code 3y ago
Thunderbird is a fantastic email client, and I'm glad that it has reached a sustainable point. I have worked with plugins just after the switch to mailextensions, and it's great to see that the community has been considered with the changes they have had to make. However, I am disappointed that TNEF decoding has been removed from the roadmap. The plugin I have been maintaining for this purpose is very old and in desperate need of a rewrite. Honestly, it just needs to be in the core of the client at this point. It is unclear why Microsoft has not completely removed their proprietary mail format, and why admins keep switching it on for outside users is anyone's guess. The plugin I mentioned is the LookOut (fix version): https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version. Pull requests are really and truly appreciated.
- rstuart4133 3y ago
  > Thunderbird is a fantastic email client, Yes, but for me it's more than a client. It's what the "cloud" future should look like everywhere. If someone provided replicated imap stores, or even better Thunderbird supported replicating the imap store to a one or more encrypted backups, it would be heaven. Access is fast because it's cached locally, but available everywhere and safe from things like "Google locks you out of your account" because it's the cloud. Thunderbird could do it now with email, calendar and notes. If we could extend that to a password store (like bitwarden), and document store (like Google docs), and a file store (like dropbox), we would be there in the open source world. It's a dream of mine.
perryizgr8 3y ago
If only there were a way to directly donate to the development of Firefox similar to this.
xupybd 3y ago
The only thing I find doesn't work well in Thunderbird is search. I hope they improve that.
sampling 3y ago
> We began 2022 with 15 core staff, and now employ a team of 24 in these roles: Product and Business Development Manager Director of Operations Product Design Manager Engineering Manager Staff Engineers (3) Sr SW Engineers (2) Sr Security Engineer SW Engineer, Add-Ons Ecosystem Sr UI/UX Developer UI/UX Developers (2) Android Project Lead Android Developer (1) Build & Release Engineers (2) Full Stack Developer Front End Developer Community Manager Marketing Manager Bug Triager Support Engineer I've never seen "Bug Triager" listed as an advertised role. Isn't this a subset of what a product owner/manager typically does?
- mercutio2 3y ago
  It depends on how many bugs get filed! If you get few enough bugs, sure, it’s a small part of one person’s job. However, if you routinely get 50 bugs a day, say… it does not work to make bug screening anything but a dedicated role. It’s a mark of success that Thunderbird gets a large enough bug flow to need a dedicated screener!
dingi 3y ago
Maybe its time for Mozilla to do the same with Firefox. Their inability to keep their flagship product relevant is astonishing.
rnd0 3y ago
How..how can this be? Everyone is using web mail portals or custom enterprise solutions. There must be some explanation for this!
- Macha 3y ago
  I recently changed employers, and one of the IT policy differences that I'm very happy with is that they do not disable IMAP, so I can use Thunderbird for my work email again. I basically abandoned all hope of keeping on top of my email at my previous employer when they locked it down to gmail web UI only.

334 points by ktosobcy 3y ago

ktosobcy 3y ago

(if only Firefox were getting funding directly…)

Multicomp 3y ago
I was about to say, if this is _too_ successful, Thunderbird may find themselves with a target on their back, so Mozilla doesn't have to keep fielding questions from users about how they can fund Firefox directly instead of general donations. Only joking (I hope).
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  Maybe Thunderbird will spin off a light, snappy little web browser with excellent quality-of-life features and a no-nonsense UI.
  - AwaAwa 3y ago
    I'd buy that for a dollar. Maybe even 2. Really does feel like the fire has gone out of the fox.
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      I've been disliking Firefox since before it was cool (the last versions I really loved were somewhere in the 1.x series, and I used to set my theme on later versions to something in the 0.x range, though I forget exactly which one)
  - donio 3y ago
    They could call it Phoenix. Or Firebird.
    - spopejoy 3y ago
      Or Iceweasel
Sytten 3y ago
I donate to Thunderbird but not firefox because of all the bullshit moves I saw them do over the past few years
- tristan957 3y ago
  You cannot donate to Firefox. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation, which is owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corporation shares profits with the Foundation, so that the Foundation can advance its goals.
scns 3y ago
You can pay for their VPN (Mullvad rebrand) or email masking service called Relay.
- ktosobcy 3y ago
  No, I can't as I don't live in supported country. Nevertheless - does it go directly to Firefox or to Mozilla?

fswd 3y ago

Please fix search. It's completely broken and unusable IMHO.

ycombinete 3y ago
I keep trying to use Thunderbird as my Fastmail client, but whenever I need to do a search I end up switching to the http client in frustration. Maybe I just don’t understand how search works in Thunderbird though!
krastanov 3y ago
While we are complaining about search-related issues: I constantly end up with messages that I know I have received, that the search might or might not list, but that then can not be opened until I run "repair folder". Happens with multiple accounts with different providers. Still better than all alternatives I have tried though :D
- tapper 3y ago
  They are working on a big UI over hall so this mite get fixt. you can test it out in the beta
- prox 3y ago
  I use Postbox which basically runs on Thunderbird I believe but has some professional tooling : https://www.postbox-inc.com/ https://www.postbox-inc.com/ I started using it when Thunderbird went under the previous time.
  - krembo 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - nitins_jakta 3y ago
    Too bad there's no Linux port.
    - 3y ago

tapper 3y ago

Why does there have to be a Android and IOS ports of Thunderbird? Just stick to desktop. This happens all the time now.

ktosobcy 3y ago
I guess they want to have "universal experience" and I don't blame them. Though, in case of Android they are going to rebrand k9-mail AFAIK.
- tapper 3y ago
  May be it's just me, but I don't use email the same on my phone as I do desktop. I have 5 accounts on my desktop but just the one witch is my mane on my phone. Aps these days cant just stay good at one thing like ff being good on windows. They want to be good on Windows, Linux, BSD, Android so on and so on.
  - ktosobcy 3y ago
    I have same accounts in k9mail and use it to quickly filter mail - quite handy. Longer replies I do from the computer. As for FX - i do use it on macos and it works perfect for me.
  - gostsamo 3y ago
    Sometimes I must open some stupid mail on my phone because an app needs it for verification or some other nonsense. I'd like to have an accessible option to do it. also an nvda user/donor
parl_match 3y ago
Why does there have to be a Thunderbird at all? The people building Thunderbird are clearly motivated to build FOSS/Libre communication tools for people. As more and more people move to using Android and ios as their primary computing environment, the existence of accessible FOSS/Libre tools such as Thunderbird becomes more important than ever. So, if they're interested or dedicated to building open tools for people to use, they can choose where to go, whether you like it or not. :) e: By the way, have you donated to Thunderbird? If you are able to pay for the software you use, especially when it seeks to be a force for good, then you should. Even $20 a year goes a long way for an organization like this.

waboremo 3y ago

An average of $21 is very impressive considering Thunderbird's position. I believe Wikimedia averages to about $15. Although I suppose its position is probably a large part of the comfort to donate more.

ijlx 3y ago
I'd be interested to know what their median donation is, assuming $21 is the mean (which it seems to be). I wonder to what extent that number is inflated by a few big donors (it might not be, I'm just curious).
- franole 3y ago
  There is a new response from Jason Evangelho about this: > -Our top 3 donors last year gave 3000 EUR, 2500 EUR, and several that gave 1000 (in both Euros and US dollars) > -We had ~76 donations last year that were $500 USD equivalent or above (these were made by individuals or small businesses that use Thunderbird, and totals less than 1% of donations) > -Donations higher than $100 USD (or equivalent) were only 5% of total donations. > -43% of donations in 2022 were between $5 – $20 USD. > In our view, we don’t have mega-donors. We have normal, awesome people

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piecerough 3y ago

Such a huge influx of capital with no mention of Generative AI features reading & writing emails for you. Impressive!

JohnFen 3y ago
Heh, that didn't occur to me. Indeed, that's a cause for celebration! If they had included such goals, though, I'd be likely to stop donating money to them.
- flangola7 3y ago
  I'd be kind of okay with it if the code all ran locally.
  - darkwater 3y ago
    Exactly. Actually it would be a giant differentiator to everything else.
- sankhao 3y ago
  I wouldn't mind if the mail client stored local embeddings of my email contents to enable a good search function.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    What practical benefit does that offer over existing (synonym-aware) keyword and phrase search approaches? The corpus of one’s mailbox is too small a dataset to draw conclusion from, surely? Not to mention being far slower to query.
    - yazaddaruvala 3y ago
      The really difficult parts about keyword search are tokenization, normalization, and synonym selection. Especially keeping them up to date. The uses of search never know about any of this, but as the developer these things need to be top of mind. Using embeddings basically lets the AI configure those things for you and auto updates when the AI updates. You could also use the embeddings for far more advanced things like in LLMs, but the basic version that is just “better keyword search” is also valuable. > Not to mention being far slower to query. KNN on the embeddings is not obviously slower to query. In production using AWS ElasticSearch, for a very large search index, my team saw no meaningful change to latency when using embeddings instead.

chrismeller 3y ago

I’m always amazed at the staff numbers for these kinds of projects. I’m glad things are going well for them, but that really seems like a high employee count for such a simple project.

ipaddr 3y ago
From 15 to 24 this year for the entire company making best desktop email? That's a reasonable number that could be higher. Facebook had 80,000-90,000 employees before the purge
- threeseed 3y ago
  Meta has a number of apps e.g. Instagram and services e.g. Workplace, hundred million times more users, revenue in the tens of billions and a highly labour intensive content moderation system. The comparison is silly. Far better would be with mobile app developers who typically have much smaller teams than 24. And so I would agree that their headcount seems excessive for what is being delivered.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Thunderbird has at least 20 million users. You think meta has trillions of customers? Those outsourced content mod teams are not included in that headcount either
    - rtpg 3y ago
      Thunderbird $4 million in revenue. Of which probably a percentage of that is not recurring? That's the number that actually matters.
      - TrueSlacker0 3y ago
        Does donations really count as true revenue? It feels wrong to use the word revenue when it's not really making money.

neilv 3y ago

When you follow the link on that page to donate, select monthly recurring donation, and go to enter payment info, they then try to upsell you (with a checkbox checked by default) to "Cover transaction costs". (When you click the info icon: "When you cover our transaction costs, you're covering both our processing and donation platform costs.") It's easier for a non-profit charity to be pushy about fund-raising, because it's for a good cause. But that's not Mozilla. Facets of Mozilla are run more like a for-profit tech company, including layoffs of engineers while executives still demand high compensation. Pushy comes across differently. People want to tip the waiter, and would feel positively about that, at the same time they'd feel negatively about a restaurant owner trying to sneak a made-up fee onto the bill.

robocat 3y ago
I suspect it is an industry trend in donations - I saw this yesterday when donating (which I don’t often do). I think they asked for $17.50 “transaction costs” on a $150 donation. I wish there was an anonymising service in New Zealand so I could donate without giving my contact details. No, I don’t want to be added to a list - there is a whole seedy underbelly to the industry of charity.
resolutebat 3y ago
You should probably be directing your outrage at the platforms that are taking those costs, not the non-profit who are effectively forced into paying them. The biggest shame of the cryptocurrency debacle is that it was never able to make any real headway into the stranglehold that the Visa/Mastercard duopoly has on online payments.

throw7 3y ago

Implement jmap then!

ktosobcy 3y ago
Is it all that useful for regular desktop mail client? I can understand it's huge usefulness in browser or on mobile but on the desktop? Yes, it simplifies mail management, but (clunky) IMAP is already and works just fine?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > but (clunky) IMAP is already and works just fine Well, 'works just fine' is not what I would say about IMAP, more like 'works most of the time'. But in the end, IMAP is just for accessing mailbox and mail. JMAP also covers (besides server side actions and settings) calendar and contacts. If you remember, there are a separate protocols for these now (CalDAV, CardDAV) which are totally unrelated to IMAP. A desktop client with a full JMAP support would be close by the functionality to Outlook connected to Exchange, which is a thing many desire, especially in corporate settings.
  - ktosobcy 3y ago
    I'm aware and use those protocols. What's the benefit of bundling IMAP/SMTP/Cal|CardDAV into single JAMP protocol here? Those separate protocols work great and if someone only needs mail can only use IMAP/SMTP?
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > Those separate protocols work great Nope, they are not. > What's the benefit of bundling Even not running around and configuring a separate IMAP, CalDAV, CardDAV, SMTP account settings would be a solid improvement. Runing over one endpoint instead of 3 would be a fine addition too. Not using a ridiculous STARTTLS would be a good thing too. > if someone only needs mail can only use IMAP/SMTP? That's not a protocol question, it's a MUA interface and configuration question.

RachelF 3y ago

I've been having to use both Outlook 365 and Thunderbird in the last few years. Thunderbird is way better than Outlook.

zokier 3y ago
Outlooks selling point is really its integration to Exchange; it doesn't even try to be stellar general purpose mail client.
- ktosobcy 3y ago
  What does that offer, i.e. what are the benefits?
  - tormeh 3y ago
    It'll remind you of meetings, for example.
    - ktosobcy 3y ago
      My regular calendar with CalDav does the same?
  - criddell 3y ago
    Support from Microsoft.
  - 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
    Enterprise features. Want to grant edit access to an online document for specific authenticated viewers using a particular matrix of browser and OS? Click share, edit permissions, send. Want to see if someone is on vacation? Put their name into the "To:" list, it'll show you their current OOO message so you can skip composing the mail. Want to grant read-only access to a particular group of users from a particular part of an AD forest to a specific shared mailbox? Couple clicks and you're done. OIDC auth with MFA so users can use a 3rd party service to index and access mail and files? Click, click, click.

aidenn0 3y ago

It seems like every (non-mac user) I know who doesn't use a web client uses Thunderbird. Am I the only user of Evolution?

uneekname 3y ago
How do you like it?
- aidenn0 3y ago
  I love it. I previously used Sylpheed (and Claws, a fork of Sylpheed), but eventually got to the point where I had to reply to HTML e-mail and that moved me back to Evolution. In addition, its Exchange backend is excellent, which is good because I can't convince O365 to send me calendar invites over IMAP.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
Sylpheed user here.
slondr 3y ago
I use aerc at work, and occasionally annoy my coworkers by asking them to send me an email that is readable in a terminal.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  I use bower (fed with isync) in addition to Evolution (because near-instant searching of 15 years of e-mails is rather handy). My coworkers always send email that is readable in a terminal, but apparently customers have this thing called "money" which means they get to dictate whether or not I use HTML e-mail...
thristian 3y ago
I tried using Evolution a few years ago, but repeatedly hit problems where if I deleted text while composing an email, "Undo" would not restore it. I filed a bug, which was eventually closed with "we've changed some things around that might have affected this issue, please try to reproduce when the next version is released". Looking at their issue tracker[1], this kind of thing seems to be a common complaint, rarely resolved with an actual direct bug fix. Most charitably, I assume that Evolution is designed for a use-case or workflow I don't have. [1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/?search=undo&sort=created_date&state=closed&first_page_size=20 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/?search=un...

samspenc 3y ago

Fascinating, per the post, they were struggling in most of 2021 and 2022, and there were some last minute contributions in December 2022 that bumped up their 2022 numbers. Curious what outreach or activity they did in Dec 2022 that led to the influx of funds.

giraj 3y ago
They explain that they added an "in-app donations appeal" at the end of 2022, so I imagine that would be it.
gostsamo 3y ago
I have the habit of donating around christmas including to TB. I suppose that I'm not the only one.

rhaway84773 3y ago

Ignoring Thunderbird was a massive fail on the part of Mozilla. The email space absolutely took off right as Mozilla narrowed its focus entirely onto Firefox. You had a bunch of mail clients revolutionizing the space and then being sold for good money.

PedroBatista 3y ago
After the browser took off, ignoring and missing things became the main objectives of Mozilla. Flush with Google money, the voices of highly technical people with a mission were overpowered by the voices of professional non-technical people with an agenda. I'm not even getting into the woke stuff, but Mozilla saw themselves as the "Open [insert new stuff]" stewards. They saw companies constantly building moats and ( understandably ) wanted to create an "open" alternative: Remember the phone OS stuff? Pocket? Servo? Rust managed to survive before the axe came. Raindrop, VR stuff, even IoT.. Since they lost almost all relevance in the browser "market", management somehow "managed" to re-frame their identity to a company that creates cool projects about the latest trend and then lets them rot since they have no traction and eventually closes them. Google does that too, but Google makes billions of dollars and can support all that "exploration", Mozilla doesn't and it will rot away until they close operations. I use Firefox since the Phoenix days, and I like it btw.

deviantbit 3y ago

I used Thunderbird, and I donate. It is worth it.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

I use it (once in a while) and I try to donate regularly just to keep it afloat, it's needed. It's really powerful in many ways but god it's UX is still awful, especially the configurations. The search if pathetic!

redeeman 3y ago
im curious which features you find powerful? as email clients go, it seems to be almost as basic as it comes, with many before it having far far more features. unless you mean the extensions?
slondr 3y ago
You'll be happy and/or sad to learn that basically the entire UX has been rewritten - the rewrite is live in the beta/daily branch. I've found it to be somewhat crash prone, for now, but the overall look and feel is a huge improvement.
- zhte415 3y ago
  Super news. I wasn't aware of this, so looked it up. Here's the Thunderbird blog for 'supernova' https://blog.thunderbird.net/tag/supernova/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/tag/supernova/
- akvadrako 3y ago
  I've been using the beta version for a few years and would say the UI changes have been trivial and it still lacks a coherent design. Like the new left navigation bar, which just opens a tab at the top.
  - tecleandor 3y ago
    I don't particularly hate it (I'm used to it after years and years and the changes have been very progressive, probably) except for the change in the "Get Mail" button. It used to be a big clear button with text, and now it's just a small arrow. Old: https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/media/uploads/gallery/images/2021-10-11-13-20-13-5076f8.png New (upper left corner) : https://149677182.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/thundebrird-planned-redesign.jpg

desro 3y ago

This is good news to me. I gave Thunderbird another go just last week, as I wanted a way to reliably get my email OUT of MS Office (work), Proton, Gmail, etc. so I could have a local copy in a format (or formats) that I choose. After I downloaded everything I ran `notmuch` on the lot. My end goal is to have some kind of locally hosted knowledgebase with nearly-instantaneous full-text search. Haven't figured out what comes next, but I'm grateful that Thunderbird made it pretty painless to get this far.

_xnmw 3y ago
I regularly dump all my Proton and Gmail to a local macOS folder and use DevonThink for nearly-instantaneous full-text search.
renonce 3y ago
That's also what I use Thunderbird for. Taking control of my emails and importing/exporting them between email providers. I wonder if there is a version of such software that can run on a cloud server though.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

Yay! I haven't used Thunderbird much in a few years, but I'm very glad they're still around. Last I tried it, I was able to pay for a cheap plug-in to authenticate to Outlook365 and retrieve corporate mail through Thunderbird for a Linux laptop pilot for work. Very glad people still have an alternative to the Enterprise Empire.

knadh 3y ago

Daily Thunderbird user for about 17 years. Has always worked well. The recent UI improvements are nice (on the eyes), but, I’m so used to the UI/UX, it just blends into the background.

dboreham 3y ago

Oh, interesting - this is actually about Thunderbird. I was expecting some AI startup founded by people too young to know there was already a Thunderbird.

toastercat 3y ago

I like Thunderbird, but on Linux I finally switched to Evolution because Thunderbird was an absolute RAM and CPU hog, and also, Google Calendar integration was flakey as hell. Thunderbird would randomly decide to not notify me of an event or decide to notify me way too late.

sph 3y ago
I would use Evolution if it didn't look and feel like the version found in early GNOME 2 Ubuntu, when they still used to ship installation CDs for free. Aesthetics is as important a feature as supporting IMAP or having decent search. Which is why I'm still stuck with Fastmail's webmail, because neither Evolution nor Thunderbird seem to satisfy these criteria.
- toastercat 3y ago
  I disagree and definitely think IMAP support and good search is more important than aesthetics here, but I also don't think Evolution looks so bad[1]. [1] https://i.vgy.me/hLJIAz.png https://i.vgy.me/hLJIAz.png

trzy 3y ago

Use it out of habit on Windows but been annoyed for years at how slow the UI is. I frequently open an email and start typing a reply and have to wait 10 seconds because it locks up for some unknown reason. I’ve never been able to figure out what’s going on and this has plagued the app for a good decade at least.

coding123 3y ago

Apple's Mail app is constantly losing it's connection to my various different work email accounts, but the annoying thing isn't that it's losing it, it's that it's not doing a good job of either telling me, or having me re-auth. I should probably give Thunderbird another try - specially since they're funding is up.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Great news. Except for the part where they used K9 instead of FairMail as a foundation for thunderbird mobile. K9 has way too many bugs and the ergonomics is terrible compared to fairmail, and both are available on fdroid.

ktosobcy 3y ago
Heh, I tried fairmail a couple of times and always came back to k9 as I found fairmail quite cluncky and odd to use :-)

valeg 3y ago

I like Thunderbird and use it all the time (it is ideal for my workflow with a couple of add-ons installed) but the developers should focus more on the application's performance. It loves to bog down my system.

ktosobcy 3y ago
AFAIR they are trying to fix internals as well, but it takes time considering lots of crust acumulated over the years?

dugite-code 3y ago

Thunderbird is a fantastic email client, and I'm glad that it has reached a sustainable point. I have worked with plugins just after the switch to mailextensions, and it's great to see that the community has been considered with the changes they have had to make. However, I am disappointed that TNEF decoding has been removed from the roadmap. The plugin I have been maintaining for this purpose is very old and in desperate need of a rewrite. Honestly, it just needs to be in the core of the client at this point. It is unclear why Microsoft has not completely removed their proprietary mail format, and why admins keep switching it on for outside users is anyone's guess. The plugin I mentioned is the LookOut (fix version): https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version. Pull requests are really and truly appreciated.

rstuart4133 3y ago
> Thunderbird is a fantastic email client, Yes, but for me it's more than a client. It's what the "cloud" future should look like everywhere. If someone provided replicated imap stores, or even better Thunderbird supported replicating the imap store to a one or more encrypted backups, it would be heaven. Access is fast because it's cached locally, but available everywhere and safe from things like "Google locks you out of your account" because it's the cloud. Thunderbird could do it now with email, calendar and notes. If we could extend that to a password store (like bitwarden), and document store (like Google docs), and a file store (like dropbox), we would be there in the open source world. It's a dream of mine.

perryizgr8 3y ago

If only there were a way to directly donate to the development of Firefox similar to this.

xupybd 3y ago

The only thing I find doesn't work well in Thunderbird is search. I hope they improve that.

sampling 3y ago

> We began 2022 with 15 core staff, and now employ a team of 24 in these roles: Product and Business Development Manager Director of Operations Product Design Manager Engineering Manager Staff Engineers (3) Sr SW Engineers (2) Sr Security Engineer SW Engineer, Add-Ons Ecosystem Sr UI/UX Developer UI/UX Developers (2) Android Project Lead Android Developer (1) Build & Release Engineers (2) Full Stack Developer Front End Developer Community Manager Marketing Manager Bug Triager Support Engineer I've never seen "Bug Triager" listed as an advertised role. Isn't this a subset of what a product owner/manager typically does?

mercutio2 3y ago
It depends on how many bugs get filed! If you get few enough bugs, sure, it’s a small part of one person’s job. However, if you routinely get 50 bugs a day, say… it does not work to make bug screening anything but a dedicated role. It’s a mark of success that Thunderbird gets a large enough bug flow to need a dedicated screener!

dingi 3y ago

Maybe its time for Mozilla to do the same with Firefox. Their inability to keep their flagship product relevant is astonishing.

rnd0 3y ago

How..how can this be? Everyone is using web mail portals or custom enterprise solutions. There must be some explanation for this!

Macha 3y ago
I recently changed employers, and one of the IT policy differences that I'm very happy with is that they do not disable IMAP, so I can use Thunderbird for my work email again. I basically abandoned all hope of keeping on top of my email at my previous employer when they locked it down to gmail web UI only.