Mozilla Opens Thunderbird Email Subsidiary

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.

The real story

[savala]

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!

Re:Better Search Sounds Good

[Fast Thick Pants]

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:Exchange Server?

[EvilRyry]

With the openchange project working on libmapi, I could certainly see this as a possibility. The SOAP calls that were previously relied by Evolution and Apple Mail on are far too slow and unstable.

WebDAV/CalDAV

[Anonymous Coward]

Lightning supports both WebDAV [wikipedia.org] and CalDAV [wikipedia.org], which allow calendar sharing. It plays with google calendar & Apple's iCal. It just doesn't play with Outlook/Exchange.

Evolution works with exchange, as does MS's Outlook Web Access.

Re:Better Search Sounds Good

[roca]

It's called "GMail"

Re:Open source and standards ftw!

[Toonol]

From what I understand, Sony is manufacturing two models of the PS3. The less expensive (presumably more numerous) model has no compatibility, while the more expensive model has software compatibility. The model with 100% hardware compatibility has been discontinued.

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:Open source and standards ftw!

[Penguinisto]

Two words concerning Xbox 360: Channel Stuffing. Factor that out (and use a halfway accurate chart this time, Sport [vgchartz.com])*. Now couple it with the device's inability (still) to turn any profit at all?

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 exactly two main sources of income: Windows licensing, and Office licensing. If they start losing out on those (which looks to be the case as time passes), the whole house of cards will come crashing down on them.

* you used game sales in your chart, not device sales. You also used a single week of game sales as a metric, which is kinda dumb).

Like I said elsewhere, MSFT won't die tomorrow, but I certainly wouldn't count on building an entire career based on 'em...

/P

Re:Will still be useless to me

[AGampher]

http://www.birdiesync.com/home.html [birdiesync.com] Works well, I use it at home for Thunderbird/Lightning since I use Outlook at the office.

Re:Happiness = free, stable centralized calenderin

[yelvington]

You might want to try Citadel [citadel.org], which has integrated email, group conversations and shared calendaring.

Re:Open source and standards ftw!

[cp.tar]

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:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant

[Secrity]

Currently the only reason I need to run Windows on my work laptop is MS Office, especially Outlook working with Exchange. I have a Linux workstation that I use for almost everything, the only reason I have to have to take my laptop out of the bag is for mail and calender. I have tried Evolution, and I find it to be very clunky and jerky.

Re:The real story

[mashade]

I think that's a lot of conjecture (but aren't all slashdot comments?), but keep in mind that Google recently added IMAP functionality to its Gmail service. This has been paramount to getting lots of organizations, including my own, to switch to Google Apps for email.

And that's hardly hostile towards Thunderbird, the sister of their preferred browser.

Re:Exchange Server?

[DraconPern]

Our LUG thought about writing a mail client using libmapi to talk to Exchange. Unfortunatly, libmapi is not enough to make it work. The RPC over HTTP piece is still missing. So at this point, an outlook replacement is still not possible.

Re:Instant messaging eh?

[simong]

I use Pidgin on Windows and Linux and have just switched to Adium on OS X after using Mercury for a while, but getting frustrated with its closedness and the idiosyncrasies of its developer, and was surprised to see that there still isn't webcam support, which is somewhat remiss given the ubiquity of cams on laptops these days (Mercury does have it, and file transfer that works). This does strike me as a bit of a show-stopper at the moment, and it may well be that if Mozilla Messaging adopts libpurple as its IM library, that would be the place in which development should initially concentrate.

Finally

[sherriw]

Hopefully this will mean that some /actual/ progress will be made on Thunderbird. I've been using it for years and I do like it, but the Lightening calendar add on is terrible, and it lacks some 'nice to have' features.

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.