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<div id="IDstID">Hi Leni,<br>
<br>
<br>
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<div id="newHeader"> <b>To: </b>"tb-planning"<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org"><tb-planning@mozilla.org></a>
<br>
<b>From: </b>"Leni Mayo"<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:mozilla.org@zindus.com"><mozilla.org@zindus.com></a><br>
<b>Sent: </b>Wednesday, 11/07/12 00:39:12 00:39 GMT Daylight
Time +0100 <br>
<b>Subject:</b>Re: Regarding your plans to reduce efforts for
Thunderbird</div>
</div>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="mid_4FFCBD20_5010403_zindus_com"
cite="mid:4FFCBD20.5010403@zindus.com" type="cite">On 11/07/12
3:53 AM, Kent James wrote:
<br>
<blockquote class=" cite" id="Cite_1" type="cite">It's a pity that
so much of the reporting is interpreting this as
<br>
"Thunderbird is dead!" rather than "Thunderbird is finally
stable!".
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yeah, that's right. Which in the short term makes it easier to
use (and develop for) and in the long term means ever increasing
levels of bitrot.
<br>
<br>
Speaking from the perspective of an addon developer, I'm faced
with constant demands for new features from users. This change
actually makes my life easier - now I can say to users
<br>
<br>
"like mozilla, I've decided to minimize the effort I put into
<br>
Thunderbird. I'm now mainly concerned with security and
stability"
<br>
<br>
Which leads me to a question that's been bouncing around in my
head for a while. Just as mozilla has found a way to withdraw
resources from Thunderbird without totally abandoning the users,
what options do addon developers have if they'd like to go down a
similar route?
<br>
</blockquote>
one thing that might be a route for Add-On developers would be to
share their projects with another Add-On authors - e.g. you could
specialize in design and leave implementation of new features to
somebody else. It is often easier to manage a multitude of projects
with little teams, or at least it will keep the interest up. From my
own experience, I have just inherited my 5th Extension, and am
currently almost way past capacity (but fighting hard to get the
code base stabilized, lots of refacturing and rewriting necessary).
But it is the same thing, once you take sole responsibility for a
project, administration can almost eat all your time. <br>
<br>
I think in the long term we need some strong teams for consolidating
add-ons and keep innovation in flow.<br>
<br>
Axel<br>
<br>
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