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Readers of tb-planning may be interested in my recent blog posting
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mesquilla.com/2014/07/31/thunderbirds-future-the-tldr-version/">http://mesquilla.com/2014/07/31/thunderbirds-future-the-tldr-version/</a>).
It is reproduced here.<br>
<div class="post-headline">
<h1>Thunderbird’s Future: the TL;DR Version</h1>
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<div class="post-byline">By rkent, on July 31st, 2014</div>
<p>In the next few months I hope to do a series of blog posts that
talk about Mozilla’s <a title="Mozilla Thunderbird"
href="https://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.mozilla.org']);">Thunderbird</a>
email client and its future. Here’s the TL;DR version (though
still pretty long). These are my personal views, I have no
authority to speak for Mozilla or for the Thunderbird project.</p>
<h2>Current Status</h2>
<ul>
<li>Thunderbird usage is growing, we have a strong core team, and
expect to remain relevant to the internet for the foreseeable
future. Thunderbird is mission critical to tens of millions of
users.</li>
<li>The last two “community-developed” Thunderbird releases, 24
and 31, while successful as stability releases, had few new
features. The enormous effort required to maintain that
stability left little time for feature development.</li>
<li>Thunderbird is an important piece, under the <a title="The
Mozilla Manifesto"
href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.mozilla.org']);">Mozilla
Manifesto</a>, of maintaining an open internet. But it is not
“The Web” and is outside of the current <a title="The Mozilla
Mission" href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.mozilla.org']);">Mozilla
Mission</a> of “<em>Our mission is to promote openness,
innovation & opportunity on the Web.</em>” Mozilla and the
Thunderbird team need to better define the implications of that.</li>
<li>Mozilla’s strategic focus on a “Web” that excludes Thunderbird
has indirectly resulted in dis-empowerment of the Thunderbird
team in a variety of ways. This is becoming an existential
threat to the product that needs addressing.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Where We Need to Go</h2>
<ul>
<li>Thunderbird should be a full-featured desktop personal
information management system, incorporating messaging,
calendar, and contacts. We need to incorporate the calendaring
component (Lightning) by default, and drastically improve
contact management.</li>
<li>We should be actively promoting open internet standards in
messaging, calendaring, and contacts through product
implementations as well as advocacy and standards development.</li>
<li>Our product should continually adapt to changing internet
usage patterns and issues, including <a title="Secure Email
Projects" href="https://github.com/OpenTechFund/secure-email"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://github.com']);">messaging
security challenges</a> and mobile interoperability.</li>
<li>We need to focus on the needs of our existing user base
through increased reliability and performance, as well as adding
long-requested features that are expected of a full-featured
application.</li>
</ul>
<h2>How We Get There</h2>
<ul>
<li>Three full-time developers are needed to ensure a stable core
base, and allow forward progress on the minimum feature set
expected of us.</li>
<li>We cannot reasonably expect Firefox and MoCo to subsidize our
operations, so we need to raise income independently, through
donations directly from our users.</li>
<li>We are proudly <a title="Mozillians"
href="https://mozillians.org"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://mozillians.org']);">Mozillians</a>
and expect to remain under the Mozilla umbrella, but the current
governance structure, reporting through a Web-focused corporate
management, is dis-empowering and needs conversion to a
community-focused model that is focused on the needs of
Thunderbird users.</li>
<li>We should ask MoFo to fund one person on the Thunderbird team
to serve as an advocate for open messaging standards,
contributing product code as well as participating publicly in
standards development and discussions.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Thunderbird team is currently planning to <a
title="Thunderbird Toronto Summit 2014"
href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Summit_2014"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://wiki.mozilla.org']);">get
together in Toronto in October 2014</a>, and Mozilla staff are
getting together in December 2014 for an all-hands. Let’s
discussion the future in conjunction with those events, to make
sure that in 2015 we have a sustainable plan for the future.</p>
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