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Mozilla Opens Thunderbird Email Subsidiary
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 19, 2008 04:51 PM
from the need-a-cute-mascot dept.
from the need-a-cute-mascot dept.
alphadogg is one of several readers to note the opening of the Mozilla Foundation's new subsidiary, Mozilla Messaging, charged with developing the free, open source Thunderbird email software. Mozilla Messaging will initially focus on Thunderbird 3, which aims at improving several aspects of the software, including integrated calendaring and better search. ZDNet UK's coverage leads with the interest the new organization has in developing instant-messaging software.
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Mozilla Messaging Devs Don't Want To Duplicate Outlook 355 comments
Petr Krcmar writes "Thunderbird 3.0 Alpha 1 was released last month. A few months before, two main developers left the project and development was moved from the Mozilla Corporation to the Mozilla Messaging, the new subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. We had the opportunity to ask some questions to David Ascher, Mozilla Messaging CEO. The interview is about present and future of Thunderbird and about related projects like SeaMonkey, Spicebird and Mozilla Calendar."
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Exchange Server? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Exchange Server? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Exchange Server? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am convinced that this question is irrelevant. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I think that in trying to emulate outlook in this respect, open source projects such as thunderbird have lost the innovative edge that other OSS projects have. I am convinced that Exchange Server is as good as dead and google docs is going to kill it. Google docs does everything that Exchange Server does, and it is in many respects better. It is innovative (labeling, for example), and most importantly, you don't need a client of any kind to use it. Just a web browser and there is no client side configuration at all. From an IT side, it is certainly easier to deploy and manage than Exchange server. Google already offers domain accounts for free, I think at least in part to prevent small and growing businesses from getting hooked on Exchange in the first place.
I bet that in the near future google is going to start selling the software that runs google docs for clients to run on their own servers. I would also bet that they will develop Exchange Server migration tools soon.
However, there is no reason why an open source project could not have done this. In the arena of website content management systems, open source projects such as TYPO3, Joomla! and phpwebsite are the leaders because instead of trying to emulate Microsoft Frontpage, they came up with good, innovative solutions oriented toward real people. Similarly, SugarCRM and phpBMS are leaders in small to medium business client management systems for the same reason: instead of emulating Microsoft Access, they are innovative, powerful, easily managed web-based solutions. None of these projects are less ambitious than google docs.
In getting so hung up on the question you just posed, we are going to see yet another generation of Outlook clones that will never be as good as Outlook because the open source developers cannot take the Exchange Server apart like Outlook developers can. We should stop asking that question and start asking what we can do to make that question irrelevant.
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Re:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
Including sit physically secure in my server room? I hate Exchange too, and also think email clients should stick to email instead of adding the kitchen sink, but Google isn't going to kill MS until people can have control over the hardware it runs on.
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Re: (Score:3)
I know it was a bit long, but if you're going to reply you could at least read the whole post.
I bet that in the near future google is going to start selling the software that runs google docs for clients to run on their own servers.
Even if they don't do this, a lot of users (especially smaller businesses without dedicated IT staff) would prefer not to be responsible for the hardware, anyway. Larger ones not so much.
Personally I think it's more likely they'll sell hardware which runs their software, similar to the Google Mini search appliance. Or perhaps even add the functionality to Google Mini: a box that costs a few grand that can inde
Re:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason it isn't working is because there are too many open-source exchange like projects. Therefore, none of them gets all of the features which are needed.
To succeed, they should bundle all forces and create ONE solution.
When we were looking for a Groupware solution, I have tried several open source solutions.
They all failed in one of the following:
- Open source Outlook co
Re:Exchange Server? (Score:5, Funny)
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The real story (Score:5, Informative)
The CEO of this new Mozilla Messaging company writes the most insightful blog post containing the most hopeful look at the future of messaging [ascher.ca] and how Thunderbird could make a difference there... and slashdot links to mostly useless informationweek and zdnet stories?? Bleh...
David Ascher really gives me hope for where things are going - but he can't do it alone. And he can't get the people who'd help to do so if he's being ignored!
always look on the bright side (Score:2)
He'll still get attention - and you get bucket loads of slashdot karma. It's a win
Re:The real story (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of curiosity, what do you think is so insightful about it? Ascher seems enthusiastic, and a pleasant guy to work for, but I didn't see any specific novel ideas in there, just a lot of "Email is important...room for improvement...add useful features...listen to our users" boilerplate.
It also struck me as odd that a decade after Netscape stuck email into the web browser and few years after Firefox stripped it back out, he's proposing to put it back in!
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Re:The real story (Score:4, Insightful)
Another thing: does Mozilla spinning off Thunderbird mean that it will get even a smaller share of their revenue for R&D? Tbird has not exactly been growing and improving by leaps and bound, and the Mozilla foundation seems to have little interest in it. Spinning it off into a separate organization sounds suspiciously like they're just plain cutting it loose. And if the new TBird org can't find it's own funding, the mail client's future is anything but bright.
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Re:The real story (Score:5, Interesting)
Polishing the current Thunderbird is (at least from the impression I get) actually one of the main goals for Thunderbird 3. It's not all that exciting to talk about, so it only got the "a set of other user interface improvements" line in davida's article, but it's definitely known that making the program just a little bit better in many small ways (my personal pet peeve on this plane is not being able to search across all accounts) would make it hugely more useful for many people, and just good enough for a whole bunch of new potential users.
And no, spinning Mozilla Messaging off actually means it has the chance to finally get the attention it deserves. The Mozilla Corporation has been totally focussed on Firefox (since that's their big cashcow, and it's hard to do two things well), and the Mozilla Foundation is mostly just an oversight and broad planning organization, so a separate organization was needed to let email stand on its own. The Mozilla Foundation hopes that Mozilla Messaging will find its own source of income fairly soon, but they're heavily investing in it right now, and I suspect that if Mozilla Messaging is successful in furthering the goals from the Mozilla Manifesto [mozilla.org], but without attracting a lot of income of its own, that funding will just keep on coming (bankrolled by the money Firefox earns). That's pure speculation on my part, and obviously MoFo won't say anything like that, because that would remove much of the incentive for Mozilla Messaging to find its own sources of funding - but it'd make sense.
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Re:The real story (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullocks.
As far as I see, this is their chance to quietly get rid of Thunderbird without making it look like they are ditching it.
Who is the big funder of the mozilla (firefox) project now? Google. Why? So they have a nice browser to use their search engine and show their ads that MS can't set with MSN as the default search engine/ad-shower. They want everyone to have that firefox instead of IE, since Google doesn't make a browser of their own.
Now what about email? Google has gmail. They'd like you to use it so they can mine all your data, show you ads, etc. Why would they want to provide you with an email client that would get set to other mail servers as much or more often then their own? They have no interest in such an email client, and definitely no interest in funding it. Therefore, it's being pushed out of the next on it's own to find it's own funding or wither and die.
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Re:The real story (Score:5, Informative)
And that's hardly hostile towards Thunderbird, the sister of their preferred browser.
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Re:The real story (Score:4, Interesting)
So basically, Mozilla is telling Thunderbird people, "go find your own sugar daddy, we're not sharing ours." All this talk of a new messaging platform is obviously a way of attracting funding. But I'm not optimistic that it will be forthcoming.
Hopefully I'm wrong. Because if I'm not, Thunderbird's progress, already slow, will cease altogether. And then it won't matter who's humming the show.
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I can has program improvements? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I know, wishful thinking, good luck.
Better Search Sounds Good (Score:5, Interesting)
The company producing the software, Stata Labs [statalabs.com], sold the technology to Yahoo in 2004. It has since been resold to Corel for use in their WordPerfect Mail.
Never let reality temper imagination
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It was also easy to set up virtual folders (based on search criteria) to associate your e-mail according to several criteria.
Thunderbird can already do this, see kb.mozillazine.org/Saved_Search [mozillazine.org]. And the searches are pretty damn fast.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Shared Calendars are what's needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the clients also offer a "calendar" where you can store events.
However, what the world needs (to avoid Microsoft's dominance) is a shared calendaring system integrated into the same email client. I use Outlook at work. At the end of the day, I care nothing what I use to send emails with, but I do care that I can view others' calendars in Outlook, and that I can send them invites and see if they've got something in the calendar or not. That is what many people are looking for, not another email client.
This will never happen on the client side if there is no server backend to manage the data and the sharing permissions.
If you build it, people will come.
My two cents.
Re:Shared Calendars are what's needed (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I can't help but think we'd see double digit percentage productivity gains if such things didn't exist. Shared calendars mean that people can see you're available and book you up solid with meetings, leaving no time to work. There isn't even plausible deniability, because they can see your calendar. You have to schedule fake appointments for yourself to get some time to work.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even so, the advent of such huge PIM and shared calendar technology, combined with the increasing use of blackberries, has made some corporate friends of mine never stop working. The technology enables their work to follow them home. My father had to turn off his blackberry when he got home because people would keep emailing and asking for meetings and so forth sometimes at horrible hours of night.
It is their choice to continue in jobs that encourage this sort of coworker behavior. Then again, if you're working for a very large (multinational?) corporation, the meeting request you just got at 1am may have come from someone in Germany. where it's an acceptable hour to be doing such things. But, then again, it's obvious that it wasn't a large problem for your father, since he TURNED IT OFF at night. Doesn't sound like it was much of an issue, does it.
WebDAV/CalDAV (Score:5, Informative)
Evolution works with exchange, as does MS's Outlook Web Access.
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Evolution is not enough (Score:4, Interesting)
I happen to be one of the unfortunate masses whose employer insists on MS Exchange for all its scheduling needs. Since I work on a linux box, this is a constant source of frustration. My day job will become noticeably easier if the OpenChange [openchange.org] project yields a solid and reasonably featured open source Exchange client.
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Re:Shared Calendars are what's needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate users should have a "corporate plugin" with all the calendaring and shared address book stuff in there. Have it as an option during install, sure, but if I'm a home user I don't want the clutter of Outlook and I certainly don't want the bloat.
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Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, what I'd like to see is an e-mail client that comes by default with working encryption... that is to say, it tells other e-mail clients what encryption choices it offers and learns from messages it receives and always chooses the best encryption option when sending messages to others. Further, I'd like that choice to handle when I send a message to a CC list of 30 people, such that it will send messages to all users, some encrypted and some not, but still letting all users get the full CC list for responses. Ideally I'd like to see this built upon an open standard that has buy in not only from the Thunderbird team, but also other major vendors (IBM, Sun, Apple, etc.) as well as other types of software (IM, VoIP, video conferencing, etc.)
Seriously, in this day and age doesn't ist seem idiotic that easy to use encryption is not a built in feature for most e-mail clients? I know why Google hasn't done this (they have a conflict of interest) but what have e-mail software vendors been doing for the last 5 years? How is it possible that someone like Apple hasn't jumped on this and made a snarky advert where the "Mac guy" says, "Oh really, I put my mail in envelopes so random strangers and people at the post office can't read the letters I send to my bank and girlfriend."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thunderbird comes by default with working encryption.
The last version I tried only supported SMIME which was not on by default and did not generate a key by default. It also was a pain when dealing with any other client since it includes an attachment to the file, which most people assume is a virus. Random chars in your sig are okay, but attachments are not in a normal work environment. It never seemed to learn that those addresses don't have SMIME support and stop sending them and did not handle CC's as I outlined above, making group discussions a mess. B
How is the Penelope project affected? (Score:5, Interesting)
Give the money to KDE (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally (Score:3, Informative)
As to those who've lost their email due to corrupted files... this happens to Outlook too. Just write a batch script to backup your mail folder once in a while. Problem solved.
And no, Gmail is not a viable alternative to a desktop mail client. Don't get me wrong, I think Google's services are great and I use Gmail for somethings, but having your entire email universe in Google's hands is foolish.
Anyway, I hope this announcement will mean some major upgrades to T bird and soon.
Re:Open source and standards ftw! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but I've been hearing that for at least 10 years now, be it with Linux or other non-Microsoft software ventures. Truth is, Microsoft is still there and it still beats the crap out of most of its competition by virtue of its monopolies.
I love Linux as much as the next guy, I use it professionally, but Microsoft is still the big rabid dog of a bad software company it's always been, and it won't go away anytime soon.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If thunderbird could beat Outlook and Exchange then that'd be quite something - but it'd need to integrate very easi
Re:Open source and standards ftw! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Open source and standards ftw! (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, unless they break into a new market or do just about anything else that keeps the status quo. Also, since Firefox hasn't cut IE's install rate to below 50%, the terms "embarrass" and "decimate" might be premature, although decimate does technically apply.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Suddenly things don't look so good for the 360.
Even worse news? Compare this little puppy [vgchartz.com] for growth rates.
By the by, Windows Mobile is now being outsold by iPhones in the North American market, and Everyone Else ('cept Palm) in the global markets (ref: Canalys; will dredge up on request).
Microsoft has exact
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Next, you're argument that 87% bought the system for watching movies isn't a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also, since Firefox hasn't cut IE's install rate to below 50%, the terms "embarrass" and "decimate" might be premature, although decimate does technically apply.
Well, that depends on where you live.
In certain parts of Europe, Firefox has 40%+ market share. Count in some other alternative browsers and there you have it... IE's dominance is dwindling.
Of course, nothing Mozilla does will be enough to lower the IE install base, since IE comes bundled with Windows, but OS X and Linux are slowly making inroads there as well.
It will take time, and MS is still very strong, but things are changing.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Open source and standards ftw! (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I might like Linux and OSS ideologies to replace Windows and MS, I honestly believe you would have to be living in dream land to think that MS is all of the sudden going to implode, let alone do it within the next 2-3 years. Just like Firefox has slowly and steadily taken market share from IE6+7, Linux will slowly and steadily take market share from Windows.
Why won't it happen fast? Firefox is a (if not the) poster child OSS program, and receives a significant amount of word of mouth advertising. It is free (in many ways, but cost is the only one that the vast majority cares about), and is almost 100% of the time rated as better than IE in reviews. And yet despite all these reasons its (albeit growing) market share is around 15%, compared to the vastly worse IE 6's 42ish% and IE 7's 32ish%.
Obviously, technical superiority and free-ness are not good enough reasons to get everyone to switch over in one big surge. Over time as Linux and OSS software in general continues to improve, the momentum to change will increase, but this change will not happen overnight. Here's to hoping for a majority market share in the next 3-4 years, but I wouldn't bet money on anything less than 6 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it took 10 or more.
I'm not trying to be pessimistic or defeatist, but rather realistic. If it weren't for the fact that I am a tech nerd and encouraged people to switch I think nearly all my friends and family would still be using IE, let alone know what Linux is.
*Disclaimer: Yes I realize no market share analyzer is 100%, or even 90% accurate, and yes I realize these often have a tendency to under-represent Linux, but these statistics do give at least a general idea of where the majority is at.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This business of both Sony and Microsoft manufacturing numerous versions of their consoles, with slightly differing capabilities, is terrible. Who wants to do research before buying a game console? Another thing Nintendo did right.
Re:Instant messaging eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Instant messaging eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you try Google? For me it lists 13 of them: SIM, Proteus, Pidgen(GAIM), OpenWengo, Miranda, Meebo, Kopete, Fire, Centericq, BitlBee, Ayttm, Agile Messenger, and Adium.
Trillian is a fine IM client, provided you only use Windows (don't need suport for other OS's) and don't mind paying for interoperability with some protocols. I used to use it when trapped on a Windows box at work years ago. That said, claiming the open source clients can't compete or don't exist just exposes that you've never bothered to look. For a reality check go look at the comments on arstechnica when the Trillian OS X client was announced. To summarize, the reaction was a big yawn, since there are several clients available on both Linux and OS X that are free (as in beer) and OSS and are as functional and polished or more. Heck Trillian doesn't even support OTR without a beta version of a third-party plug-in. In fact plug-ins only work on the pro "for pay" version so if you want to chat with something like a Google GTalk user, or XMPP over ZeroConf you have to shell out for a non-crippled version. If you're stuck using just Windows it is a reasonably easy answer, but I'd rather use Pidgin these days and probably Kopete within the next few months now that it is abstracted from the OS enough to be built for Windows and OS X.
Let me answer your question with a question. Why do you assume there are no OSS solutions instead of spending 2 minutes with Google?
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Re:Happiness = free, stable centralized calenderin (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mozilla.org should concentrate on their core stuff, the browser and email.