Joining forces vs. starting from scratch (was Re: Proposal to start a new implementation...)

[Ben Bucksch]

R Kent James wrote on 11.04.2017 05:09:

> Primarily the work of 2 people.

That's interesting to know. This speaks about the feasibility of the 
project, the duration, and the number of man years required. They didn't 
work for more than 2 years on this, so this means roughly 5 man years 
maximum. And they got quite an impression result.

Of course, that's not at the feature level of where Thunderbird-Next 
needs to be. But OTOH, they ad to master many of the difficult 
architectural challenges that come with a project like this. This is a 
feat it itself.

So, I think the 30 man years we've been estimating are fairly realistic.

> GPL code :(

That of course seriously hinders code changes.

> I wonder if we would ever consider switching to GPL?


FWIW: I would consider that. GPL2 or GPL3 or LGPL is fine with me, 
personally.

And the Mozilla project has opened up the way for this, by the 
tri-licensing under MPL1.1/GPL2/LGPL2, and adapting the MPL2 to the 
GPL2, so that MPL2 code can be combined with GPL2 code.

I'm not saying we should take this path, but I'd be open for it.

Ben