CardBook postulates to become a Thunderbird featured addon.

[Philippe VIGNEAU]

Hi all


Sure, it's a free world, it's open-source, everyone can do what they want, but a coordinated effort to achieve a better overall product,
would be preferable.

--> I totally agree but I can say it's hard to be accepted ;O)


For me this sounds like a offer to integrate CardBook.

--> no offer at all , if you believe it's valuable for Thunderbird : no 
problem for me... if you don't, also no problem...


Cardbook is not a demo of Thunderbird++ technologies, but a proposal for an alternate address book with the current version of Thunderbird. Let's
make sure we keep those issues separate.

--> right, but when the new technologies will arrive, I'll migrate 
CardBook to them. Cardbook is not a Proof Of Concept, I hope to maintain 
it on the long term (as I'm not a very skilled developper, and I hope to 
be driven|helped for this migration ;O)


In any case, I am happy to hear that Philippe is interested in helping us with the future of Thunderbird!

--> yes very


That being said, we (Caspia) would love to figure out a way to work with you.

--> I would also love to quit my "Alone" project to work with others :O)...


Philippe, would you be willing to re-license under MIT or the MPL?

--> The best for the end : CardBook is now licenced on MPL 2.0 (I don't 
know the implications but let's try :O)



Philippe


On 11/04/2017 02:42, R Kent James wrote:
> On 4/8/2017 2:10 AM, Philippe VIGNEAU wrote:
>> hi folks
>>
>> The development of CardBook goes on, and I think that it is now 
>> eligible to become a Thunderbird featured addon
>
> Yes, that would be great, it is an excellent addon.
>
> The current issue is that nobody is managing featured addons for 
> Thunderbird. We were contacted about that, I believe a couple of years 
> ago, but did not get anyone willing to take it on. So that feature is 
> dormant. It would be great if someone would agree to take on the task 
> of reviewing and selecting featured addons for Thunderbird.
>
>> About the future of Thunderbird, whatever would be the path to the 
>> new Thunderbird, I'm ready and open to work to make CardBook the new 
>> Thunderbird addressbook.
>
> Perhaps you are asking if, prior to the switchover to Thunderbird++, 
> Thunderbird should switch to Cardbook for a year or two.
> Cardbook is not a demo of Thunderbird++ technologies, but a proposal 
> for an alternate address book with the current version of Thunderbird. 
> Let's make sure we keep those issues separate.
>
> I hope everyone understands that Thunderbird++ is a rewrite without 
> XPCOM and XUL. Cardbook, in spite of being an excellent addon, is not 
> at all focused on the issue of migrating away from Gecko. So while it 
> could be a candidate for replacing or supplementing the existing 
> address book, it would need to be rewritten (as does the rest of 
> Thunderbird) to a future technology without XUL or XPCOM. BenB is 
> proposing that we do NOT rewrite existing XUL/XPCOM code to port to a 
> new approach, but rather start from scratch. That is up for debate 
> still, but Cardbook uses the old technologies and would need to be 
> rewritten (along with the rest of Thunderbird) for Thunderbird++.
>
> As a coincidence, in my Monroe class today we installed a local 
> Sabre/dav carddav server and your addon (Cardbook) as one of various 
> demos of address book UIs and backends.
>
> However, I had to give them a cautionary speech about the licensing 
> issues. Any product released by Thunderbird would likely be MPL 
> licensed. Anything released through the Caspia project would likely be 
> Apache or MIT licensed. There are serious license compatibility 
> issues, as we have discussed earlier, between your GPL code and future 
> code. "ready and open to work (together)" can only start when Cardbook 
> is relicensed as MPL or weaker. You've said you are willing to do 
> that, and I would encourage you to urgently pursue relicensing away 
> from GPL if you hope for your addon to be available for use (either in 
> part or in whole) as part of the Thunderbird core.
>
> That being said, we (Caspia) would love to figure out a way to work 
> with you. But also as I said to you earlier, the goals of your project 
> and ours are very, very different and may not be compatible. What we 
> are attempting is closer to Mark Banner's "define an experiment which 
> is limited in scope and goals" initially, trying to model a possible 
> larger Thunderbird rewrite using contact management as a base. We will 
> be looking at small experiments initially, seeing how we would port 
> those to Electon/NodeJS, or Myk Melzez's qbrt, or as a "pure" web app 
> possibly with a process or server to implement needed features missing 
> from the web (like non-http tcp/ip access). We're looking several 
> years ahead, while you are trying to fix the present. Both are needed. 
> Let's keep talking.
>
> :rkent