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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/21/2014 5:44 AM, Axel Grude
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:54465531.2000904@gmail.com" type="cite">Also,
I would like to see a "monetization" team that help both funding
Thunderbird and helping productivity Addon developers to self fund
(not necessarily with money, but a proper market-place experience
or subscription channels would be great) to make this a better
product. We have seen some feedback on people being opposed to
monetization in form of <i>landing pages</i> / <i>asking for
donation</i>s. IMO these users should have an option for a
yearly "silent" subscription, e.g. 10$/year. i think a free (as in
beer) product should have some way of asking for direct means <b>to
fund itself </b>(<u>NO THIRD PARTY ADVERTISEMENTS</u>!!!). It
has to be clear that Thunderbird is independent and as such must
fund <b>itself</b> independently.</blockquote>
There were also substantial discussions of monetization issues at
the Summit which I will post about later. TL;DR version is that we
will be trying to raise income for the project through asking for
donations.<br>
<br>
We also had a session on "Thunderbird Pro", which would be a version
of Thunderbird with additional, pay-only features (such as Exchange
support, or support, or other addons) and would be distributed for a
fee. The impression I got from that though is not significantly
different from the previous gathering that you attended. Namely,
there is not enough interest by other core contributors in this for
it to be viable at the moment. They don't oppose the concept, but
they cannot see themselves able to spare 10-20 hours per week to
work on it, given that they have existing full-time jobs. For
myself, the status quo is working out, since ExQuilla can provide me
sufficient income.<br>
<br>
The real answer here is for Marketplace to be ported to work with
desktop apps, including Firefox and Thunderbird. But TheOne does not
believe that is likely to happen.<br>
<br>
:rkent<br>
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