Why can't you guys just hire more people to work on it? Mozilla received millions last year and have only picked up a few people here and there so what is going on with the rest of the money?
Kurt
July 25, 2007 10:06 AM
Kurt:
I do not believe that hiring more people will solve the Thunderbird issues. Assume an additional 5 (or 10, or 100) people to work on Thunderbird. Is that enough to compete with other players for a consumer based product? No. Firefox is succeeding because of a massive community of people who build the product and drive adoption.
Thunderbird does not have this community. It never has. We can speculate on the reasons. But whatever the reason, Thunderbird does not have the community development that has driven other projects. I do not see Thunderbird changing. And I do not see Thunderbird developing further within the current structure without such a change. I do not see Mozilla hiring enough people to make up for this difference.
Mitchell Baker
July 25, 2007 3:02 PM
Any corporate separation of Thunderbird seems like a short sighted plan. Mozilla was my last vestige of hope for having an email client that was integrated with the web browser. I don't mean in the same program. I mean that it interacted with the browser in innovative ways. I thought that breaking out the email program first was just a start to then optimizing mail, and subsequently reconnecting it back to the browser.
The problem with ALL stand alone email clients, and why they are getting spanked by web mail clients, is ease of set up. In every other way they are usually better. Having to enter those esoteric smtp, imap, or pop addresses is not only a bit of a drag for the experienced, but absolutely intimidating to the tentative (compared to the webmail experience).
Imagine this... I open up firefox and go to hotmail. What comes up is my hotmail page with a message laid over it, "Would you like to continue using the standard hotmail interface, or would you like to use the enhanced Thunderbird interface? This is a one time message to automatically set up your Thunderbird email client for your hotmail account. You can go back to the standard interface in the future by simply navigating to your hotmail account in your web browser as usual. But, if you want to use the enhanced Thunderbird interface, all you need to do is launch the Thunderbird program and it will automatically handle your hotmail mail."
A simple plug in connecting Firefox and Thunderbird could accomplish this. Its very easy to just program in tables of the correct servers for the all of the top mail services and completely alleviate the user of any of the typical email set up stuff. All they need to do is log in with username and password.
(A "click here" on the message to list all of the great features of a local mail client program can be added as well. And, I know I made that message long, I just wanted to convey the gist of things.)
Apple does a similar (sort of) thing if you use their Mac.com email. How about Mozilla providing that solution for everyone else? I think Apple was right that email is the number one application on the internet. Reducing the community trust in your email client does not seem wise to me.
John
July 27, 2007 7:50 AM
John
I agree that email integrated with browsing could be of great interest. That's exactly the kind of issue that we'd like to think about in a mail discussion. Currently the Thunderbird team and product direction is distinctly focused on Thunderbird as a desktop application. Maybe that should change, maybe it will. The point of the discussion is to figure out if there are people who have interest and willingness to get involved, either in evolving Thunderbird or in a general mail initiative.
If this discussion results in innovative things happening along the lines you suggest or otherwise, then we will all succeed.
Mitchell Baker
July 27, 2007 10:47 AM
Revenue has nothing to do with our thinking about Thunderbird. I put that topic near the end because I thought it would make more sense after describing the other topics. I anticipate some set of people -- hopfully small -- won't believe this no matter what I or anyone say, but for others, the assertions revenue is not the issue here will make more sense after the rest of the discussion.
Mitchell Baker
July 27, 2007 6:37 AM
Mitchell,
Could you comment on what relationship, if any, you see between the Thunderbird future and Chandler?
Saul Tannenbaum
July 27, 2007 8:25 AM
Mitchell perhaps you might want to explain to all this issue better. Because most of us simple don't seem to get it, including me.
In addition to an answer in my Blog https://blog.startcom.org/?p=28 I would like to add that Thunderbird supplements to Firefox as a color in a picture. If you take away one color (lets say all blue colors and you are left with only red and yellow), your picture doesn't look complete. I think that adoption of both programs help each other.
Eddy Nigg
July 27, 2007 7:34 AM
Saul:
I'm not sure of what relationship might exist between Thunderbird and Chandler. Thunderbird has email and there's Lightning as a calendar project under development. Chandler has a calendar and task sharing function coming up to a preview release. chandler also has an unusally strong focus on design and use cases behind its development, as well as a web UI and a server.
So there may be some interesting combination there. The technologies are different though which adds complexity.
Eddy: I'm not sure how to be clearer on this particular issue: Google is irrelevant to this. Revenue possibilities in Thunderbird is irrelevant to our thinking. If your question is why we think Thunderbird doesn't fit within the same operational organization as Firefox, I'll get more on that posted shortly.
Mitcheklk
Mitchell Baker
July 27, 2007 10:53 AM
Hi,
There is something that confuses me a bit. Please correct me if I'm wrong:
The original post that started all the discussions was entitled "Email Call to Action" and raised some points about innovation and something beyond Thunderbird. Then the rest of the posts up to this one dealt mostly with the reasons behind splitting the Thunderbird team. does that mean there is more than one email project in Mozilla's plans?
If my understanding is right,I assume the big picture is like this:
a) The Thunderbird team wants to continue developing Thunderbird as a standard email program to be most useful to its current user base.
b) Meanwhile, there's an experimental mysterious new project that the Mozilla organization is thinking about. Perhaps something web based or related to Eudora. And that's the reason behind the call to action.
If that's true, then it would be quite interesting. And something I'd like much to contribute to. Can you please clarify the situation further?
Mohamed Samy
July 28, 2007 10:27 AM
Mohamed
I'd say your summary of the big picture is very close. We hear regularly that people would like to see big changes in mail, either to make it more web-based, or to deal with new ways of communicating, to include social networking aspects, etc. These are generally bigger changes than we are likely to see in Thunderbird. So your (a) is right on the mark.
The only thing I'd disagree with in (b) is the word "mysterious." I understand things may seem mysterious, but there is not any particular plan we're thinking about. We're thinking:
(a) lots of people say they want changes in mail; (b) mail and communications are a big part of internet and web life;
(c) if we can find the right people who have the capability, interest and desire to lead such an project, then Mozilla would be interested in doing something.
This is different from seeking suggestions as to what mail could be. Great projects are built by people with have a vision, have or make time to get involved and are driven to create something interesting. Without that we're unlikely to see much happen.
Mitchell Baker
July 28, 2007 12:55 PM
"Perhaps even more fundamental, the world is still [moving new things into the browser] platform, but many [consumers] are moving away, have already moved away or may never use stand-alone desktop email."
"Younger generations [see "consumers"] in particular use other techniques".
Etc, etc.
Ok, now I understand the whole picture. I guess since I am not moving new things into the browser, I am not a consumer, I am not moving away, I have always used desktop mail client and I am not "young generation", I am not part of the Mozilla vision any more.
It seems me and Mozilla are going in different directions and It is time to say goodbye.
And yes, I am upset and I do belive you are wrong. These are the usual "new economy" plans like big companies investing in SecondLife then get disappointed because it is wasted money.
Time will tell.
LorenzoC
July 31, 2007 1:14 AM
LorenzoC
My post explicitly says that mail is important. It was descriving why having the same people (other than the thunderbird developers who work only on thunderbird) try to go between prodjects is hard, and why the important of even something like mail is currently overshadowed and how we are trying to find ways to address that.
Mitchell
Mitchell Baker
July 31, 2007 2:59 AM
This is my personal view and vision for Thunderbird:
Thunderbird 3 has tabs! Testing can be done from the nightly builds:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
Now we can have the Email stuff in one tab, calendar in the next, IM in
another one...and all I really need is...Firefox in the following tabs.
Seriously! How many times have I the sidebar open on Firefox? Almost
never...On Thunderbird I have the sidebar always open with various
stuff. All I want is access the various email accounts, choose my
contacts and a) send a mail, b) chat with a contact, c) send a SMS, d)
organize my tasks and events, e) view the schedule of others...oh and
yes, I want to browse the Internet. I want to do that from within
Thunderbird.
Having said sidebar, I want to have a small Googlebar there as well. I
use Google search a lot and it's good for revenues ;-) . Never mind how
we call this...Thunderfox or Firebird, one thing is clear to me:
Thunderbird is indispensable! So is Firefox!
Cheers!
Eddy Nigg
July 31, 2007 1:23 AM
Eddie
I agree about the tabs. Actually, I use a special build of Thunderbird that has tabs in it and have for a year or two. I find them extremely useful. I am eagerly waiting to see this feature land in the main Thunderbird builds so that it is automatic and available to everyone. I believe that David is reimplementing this feature now. I'm not sure of the timeframe for its arrival but you could ask David.
On the Googlebar, you'll need to get that from
Google.
Mitchell Baker
July 31, 2007 3:06 AM
Can you explain to me why there are more than rumors that the lead developers got fired? Wouldn't it be better to first find the best organizational change (if any), then allocate the funds needed for - it based on a new road map and declared goals - and perhaps only then move the developers along?
It's none of my business who MoCo employs, but since this is a public discussion initiated by yourself, I feel free to ask since it greatly disturbs me!
Eddy Nigg
July 31, 2007 1:15 AM
Eddy
There is no basis at all for any rumors about thunderbird developers being fired. No truth at all. As to explaining why, I guess the answer is that rumors are easy to start.
There is no truth in any such rumor.
mitchell
Mitchell Baker
July 31, 2007 3:09 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment