Loading ...Mozilla looking at Thunderbird spin off options
Mozilla CEO, Mitchell Baker has announced the Mozilla Foundation is looking for options on how to give Thunderbird as a project, the autonomy and focus it needs to develop to its full potential.
“The Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn’t focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future.”, reads Mitchell’s post.
Options include creating an independent Thunderbird Foundation, which would involve a very significant effort and cost. Another option is to create a subsidiary but would more likely result in the current situation. The third option is to spin a community project similar to SeaMonkey with infrastructure support provided by Mozilla. Yet another option is to look for a third party project that could adopt Thunderbird.
My first reaction is surprise. It is pretty obvious that Firefox is the focus of most resources available at the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation. Firefox is the most important source of revenue for the Mozilla entities but most importantly an extremely effective way to follow its principles and achieve its goals of building and enabling open source technologies, consumer products, and economic models for public value. Regarding the web.
But according to the Mozilla Manifesto, Mozilla is about all that for the Internet and not just the web. Mozilla could be about chat, VoIP, video conference, peer to peer and other Internet enabled technologies. Not all of them or at least not all of them at the same time, but being solidly established in the email segment I don’t see why it should quit.
I believe the purpose of spinning off Thunderbird (and Calendar as well I guess) is more about focusing on Firefox than empowering Thunderbird as a project. And this is the part that puzzles me as voluntarily limiting its scope contradicts the Mozilla Manifesto.
I could understand if a lack of funding could be threatening the whole project. Then dropping some products would make sense in order to save Mozilla as an organization. But it doesn’t seem to be the case neither in the present nor in the foreseeable future.
However it doesn’t seem to be about dropping email, just Thunderbird.
“We would also like to find contributors committed to creating and implementing a new vision of mail. We would like to have a roadmap that brings wild innovation, increasing richness and fundamental improvements to mail.”, reads another part of the post.
I can relate to such statement. As millions of users I am locked in Outlook at work. But for me, email equals the web: RocketMail, Yahoo! Mail, self-hosted SquirrelMail, back to Yahoo! Mail and since about a couple of years ago Gmail. I don’t know what I’ll be using in a couple of years but my safest bet would be some other web mail application and not a desktop email client. And I would like a tighter integration between my browser, Firefox, and my web mail, Gmail. There are enough extensions to make this integration a reality today: say Gmail Notifier and Webmail Compose. But there are millions of users in the same situation and enough to make it desirable to have this feature integrated with my browser.
I am still not sure if currently in development protocol web handling will be the answer to at least part of what I expect but hopefully users will be able to set a custom URL to take care of mailto: links.
Moving forward, a totally different system could replace email and perhaps this is what Mitchell’s post suggests. After all email has proved to be an inefficient system and mentioning all its weaknesses would be a long task. A recent article highlighted how the youngest Internet users rely on social networks’ (like Pownce, Facebook and MySpace) messaging systems to stay connected rather than email. I’m inclined to believe messaging will evolve into some kind of standardization of message sharing instead of delivery.
But email desktop clients are and will be part of the Internet landscape in the next few years. At least thanks to usual business shyness. So I believe Thunderbird (and Sunbird and Lightning which would more likely follow) should stay at home.
Or the Mozilla Manifesto updated to reflect a web only scope.
UPDATE: Scott McGregor, Thunderbird Lead Engineer, has posted his views on the future of Thunderbird.
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July 26th, 2007 at 1:53 am
Wow! I would hate to see Thunderbird leave Mozilla but agree a lot more emphasis is placed on Firefox. May be removing the ‘get mail’ button in Fx 2 was an indication of things to come…
Funny thing is we don’t use Outlook at my job, we have our own web-based e-mail system. Further we don’t use e-mail that much as the main communications tool is Microsoft Office Communicator.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:20 am
This sucks. I went from Netscape mail to Thunderbird for personal use. I loved it so much, that when I ended up working for a company with Outlook I stuck with Thunderbird there too (ahhhh, Admin power), which was fine since they never used the calendar functions.
I was looking forward to getting calendar into Thunderbird so that I could switch to Thunderbird at this new job too (invites are a way of life here). Now the program will basically be dead.
This bites.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I agree that this sucks. It feels as if the MoFos are getting rid of Thunderbird because it is ugly. Or something.
:(
July 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Bob I don’t think any decision will signal Thunderbird’s death. I am confident that Mozilla will try to take the best path to help Thunderbird’s success.
My questions are why out of Mozilla and how does it align with its principles.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Hi Percy - I’m confident that this does signal the beginning of the end of Thunderbird as a viable email solution. I’m hoping I’m wrong, but I fear I’m right.
I think this specifically because of your question “why out of Mozilla”. If Mozilla saw this as a viable app, then they’d keep it. Instead, they’ve changed their mission. As per Scott’s blog: “the Mozilla Foundation’s mission has evolved to focus on advancing the open web through browsing and related activities”
Notice it is specific about browsing and web and not Internet any longer.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I am sad to see that the Mozilla Foundation does not feel that Thunderbird is an integral part of its mission to further access to the Web in an open manner. Email access, whether from a browser or a desktop based client is still a fundamental part of Internet access for most users. It will continue to remain a fundamental part of access to the Internet by most people for the foreseeable future.
A free open, extensible mail client that shares a similar code base to Firefox, Lightning, and Sunbird are the only chance that Windows users have of replacing the Exchange/Outlook/Internet Explorer Juggernaut that currently absorbs corporate IT cultures and corporate Intranets.
“Setting Thunderbird Free” is a grave mistake that will surely kill the future of this very adequate mail client, doom Sunbird and Lightning, and slow or stall adoption of Firefox in businesses that utilize Windows client Operating Systems.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I have a theory about why Mozilla Foundation may be getting rid of Thuderbird. Here it is:
Since Google is a primary funder of the Mozilla Foundation, and since Google is actively developing and offering their own enterprise grade email ecosystem via gmail and google apps, maybe they are wanting to kill off or hinder the development of Thunderbird to “encourage” those wanting to ditch the Outlook/Exchange Juggernaut to move to Google, instead of utilizing a Thunderbird and Lightning integrate application with an open source groupware backend.
You know, in general, corporate funders of not-for-profits have ulterior motives, so this is a reasonable theory for why cutting Thunderbird from the Mozilla Foundation “makes sense” all of a sudden.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I’ve used Thunderbird for years now and rely heavily upon it on a daily basis. I get a ton of email and I’ve not yet been happy with any sort of web interface for email. The web is just too slow for the amount of email I get, and I probably don’t even get that much compared to others. Perhaps time and Google Gears will fix these problems for people who get massive amounts of email. Until then I don’t see webmail as completely taking over and would like to see Thunderbird continue on with Mozilla.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I to have been using Thunderbird for as long as I can remember, I have a plugin that pops my yahoo,msn,aim and Gmail, and my personal email as well. One box many accounts. I recently found a plugin that allows my google calendar to cync with my lighting calendar in thunderbird. I have seen mention of OpenOffice and Sun working with Thunderbird and Lighting to offer a PIM in the OpenOffice Suite. Could it be that this set up along with Openeoffice and OpenGroupware is looking to make a slash onto the market for those werey of having ever thing online?