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<div class="" id="magicdomid2"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">Kent, great questions.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid3"><br>
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<div class="" id="magicdomid4"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">My analysis on this market
segmentation question is fairly coarse, but maybe useful. This
is mostly derived from anecdotal information rather than great
data, because solid analytics are really hard to come by.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid5"><br>
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<div class="" id="magicdomid6"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">I believe the two largest
segments for current users of Thunderbird are:</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid7"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid8"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">1) "Institutional" or
"enterprise" deployments, such as universities and governments,
who deploy Thunderbird primarily because it's open source, and
gives them a traditional email client (rather than webmail)
which does not tie them to a proprietary vendor. It's hard to
tell how many large businesses use Thunderbird -- I suspect most
of our corporate users are outside of North America, due to the
different relationships with Microsoft in different geographies.
(Note that for most universities I know about, desktop clients
are primarily allocated to faculty & staff, and students,
more mobile, use webmail).</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid9"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid10"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">2) SOHO/SMB-type users for
whom Thunderbird is the preferred choice because of a
combination of: a) history (many Thunderbird users picked
Netscape years ago), b) customization options, including
add-ons, myriad preferences, c) an affinity with Mozilla and the
values of openness, user control, etc.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid11"><br>
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<div class="" id="magicdomid12"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">There are other groups in my
mind (and I realize my breakdown of the market is similar but
slightly different than yours), but the above two, I believe,
account for most of our users. This is a very gross
generalization, and indeed many educational users also like the
Mozilla mission, and there are people using it as a "home email
client" as a complement to their Outlook usage at work, etc. <br>
</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid13"><br>
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<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid41"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">Still, the dichotomy above is
I think quite interesting, and portentous (which is a word I
wouldn't normally use except how often does one get a chance?).
In particular, I see the above two segments wanting different
things out of an evolving product.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid15"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid16"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">Institutional admins have a
job that I remember well (I used to be the mail admin for
brown.edu, dealing with about 6k users). In many ways, success
comes from establishing enough control so that users don't cause
too much havoc, because there's always way more users than there
are hours to help them. In particular, those deployments of
desktop software need things like remote management, more or
less locked-down setups, centralized configuration, multi-year
roadmaps, SLAs, second-tier support arrangements,
interoperability with systems like Exchange, blackberries, etc.
The systems they want Thunderbird to integrate with tend to be
internal systems like inside-the-firewall calendar servers, LDAP
servers, CRMs, Exchange servers, etc. (Educational institutions
in some ways have it even worse than corporate deployments,
because their user populations resent central control, and their
budgets are often tight). These deployments tend to prefer
slower product evolution.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid17"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid283"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">SOHO/SMB users tend to be more
like "consumers". They get software straight from the "vendor"
(or from their Linux distro), do security updates as prompted,
relish the ability to be "in charge" of their software life.
They tend to want to integrate with the internet rather than the
intranet, and many are exploring varieties of communication
systems from Facebook to Twitter to Skype, etc. They tend to
live more and more on the web, and expect more and more all of
their software to integrate with the web. These users range in
their attitude towards change and risk, ranging from early
adopters to more conservative users (most of us actually have
different attitudes towards different things -- e.g. I like my
cars and clothes old, my web toys shiny and new).</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid19"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid20"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">A couple of additional
meta-points:</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid21"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid22"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - Both market segments
periodically evaluate their use of desktop software in a world
where the web is becoming more potent daily, but where their
feeling of control over the software they use on the web is
being challenged as well. I think we need to build tomorrow's
software with as full an understanding of these factors as
possible. I can talk forever about that, but it's a bit
off-topic.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid23"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid24"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - Mozilla's culture, at least
since the inception of Firefox, and as described by the Mozilla
Manifesto, is user-centric, not business-centric. When having to
choose between something that is better for people or something
that is better for organizations, we routinely choose the
former. I'm proud of that and I don't see that changing.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid25"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid26"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - I believe it is easier to
get unpaid contributors to projects that are aimed at individual
users; I believe it is easier to build businesses making
software for businesses. All other things being equal, of course
(_Ceteris paribus_ as philosophy teachers say).</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid27"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid28"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - Mozilla's greatest
successes to date center on making the web accessible, fun,
useful. I don't think that's an accident. I think the web was
built to be open, and as a result, a small group of people can
have a large impact with it. I don't know anyone who'se been
able to have similar scale impact in the world of traditional
messaging stacks, for a variety of reasons.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid29"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid30"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">My thinking about where we
should go from here is evolving, but my current thoughts are:</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid31"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid32"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - Mozilla Messaging will be
exploring possible new features for Thunderbird primarily
through add-ons, so that we can iterate fast, and take risks
which we can't take with trunk. As an example of the kinds of
things I'm thinking about, see Shane Caraveo's blog: </span><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r url"><a
href="http://shane.caraveo.com/">http://shane.caraveo.com/</a></span><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> -- he's been getting familiar
with the codebase, and spinning up a few experiments. Aspects
that I'd like us to explore include making Thunderbird more
competitive for the "SOHO/SMB/consumer" market, including
integration with web-based services, including Weave for sync,
etc.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid33"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid34"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - We'll also keep working on
the "platform" aspect of our codebase, so that both we and
others can experiment more easily. That includes things like
keeping up with the work that the Jetpack team is working on,
and likely building more bits of componentry into the platform.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid35"><br>
</div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid36"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - I don't think it would
serve our mission to set up Mozilla Messaging as an
enterprise-focused business, and I don't think we have the DNA
for it. However, maybe others can fill in the gap. To explore
that, we've been thinking about setting up an email list where
admins of large Thunderbird deployments can drill into the
issues which get in their way, and, I'm hoping, find companies,
add-on authors, and contributors who can help them. The
conversation about autoconfig in universities was interesting,
but I think we can have maybe less virulent versions of those
discussions in a better defined forum, and where I can point
people who might be able to help.</span></div>
<div class="" id="magicdomid37"><br>
</div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid284"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r"> - As an aside, I'm really
interested in your work on EWS. I think there are lots of
opportunities there, especially for someone who's interested in
building a business around it. I also think it's potentially a
very large project, and has definite technical risk, which is
why I like the fact that you're poking at it to understand those
areas of risk.</span><br>
<br>
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<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid287"><span
class="author-g-hplwnx0vjmffqj3r">--da</span></div>
<div class="ace-line" id="magicdomid288"><br>
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