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Micronaut

Member

Registered: 2019-07-04

Posts: 228  

Thunderbird needs to be forked

There have been rumblings in the past from Mozilla about "improving" their perfectly functional email client. No one seems to understand the concept of "mature product" any more. Everything has to be constantly updated. Now they are planning to shift it to a subsidiary to get around their non-profit status and start exploiting their access to everyone's desktops.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/01/2 … subsidiary

The Mozilla Foundation announced today that it was moving its Thunderbird email client to a new subsidiary named the MZLA Technologies Corporation. From a report:
Mozilla said that Thunderbird will continue to remain free and open source, but by moving the project away from its foundation into a corporate entity they will be able to monetize the product and pay for its development easier than before. Currently, Thunderbird is primarily being kept alive through charitable donations from the product's userbase. "Moving to MZLA Technologies Corporation will not only allow the Thunderbird project more flexibility and agility, but will also allow us to explore offering our users products and services that were not possible under the Mozilla Foundation," said Philipp Kewisch, Mozilla Product Manager. "The move will allow the project to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations, which in turn can be used to cover the costs of new products and services," Kewisch added.

It looks like there will soon be a desperate need for a fork and a new home to maintain a decent FOSS email client. Who might be lobbied to adopt Thunderbird as it currently exists?  Wouldn't an integrated email client be a good thing for LibreOffice? Maybe the Document Foundation could make a fork and add it to their suite.

Does the Gnu foundation have it's own email client yet? I know they are way behind on most other large applications, and even their kernel. Too much time and effort has gone into emacs... Hmm, I bet emacs has a mail reader mode?

bgstack15

Member

Registered: 2018-02-04

Posts: 205  

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

My mom actually still uses Thunderbird. I expect it's seriously out of date. Anyway, I think TDF would be a great organization to maintain an email client!

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Ron

Member

Registered: 2018-04-22

Posts: 526  

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

There is a fork called Interlink Mail & News:  https://binaryoutcast.com/projects/interlink/

PedroReina

Member

From: Madrid, Spain

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 269  

Website

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

Wouldn't an integrated email client be a good thing for LibreOffice?

The grandpa of LibreOffice, StarOffice, had a e-mail client called StarMail. So, it get lost in some version from StarOffice to OpenOffice to LibreOffice.

My mom actually still uses Thunderbird.

I'm using version 2.0. Inherited all my mail from Netscape Mail. No problems so far.

Micronaut

Member

Registered: 2019-07-04

Posts: 228  

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

There is a fork called Interlink Mail & News:  https://binaryoutcast.com/projects/interlink/

Wow! That's good to know! I will definitely keep an eye on that.

The Slashdot article also has a post from someone pointing out an alternative called Claws Mail. https://www.claws-mail.org/

So there are a few options. But I still hope that the current Thunderbird is adopted by someone before it is ruined.

Micronaut

Member

Registered: 2019-07-04

Posts: 228  

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

The grandpa of LibreOffice, StarOffice, had a e-mail client called StarMail. So, it get lost in some version from StarOffice to OpenOffice to LibreOffice.

Hmm, and now I wonder what happened to StarMail...

ToxicExMachina

Member

Registered: 2019-03-11

Posts: 210  

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

Does the Gnu foundation have it's own email client yet?

If you mean the GNU Project, then yes. They have a nice e-mail client called GNU Emacs.

Geoff 42

Member

Registered: 2016-12-15

Posts: 462  

Re: Thunderbird needs to be forked

There is some discussion of the choice of email clients at :-

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=3119

Geoff