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<p>I made an argument to Mozilla, that I believe was largely
accepted, that said that consulting on a future platform for
Thunderbird is not really what we need. Regardless of the
recommendations, the reality is that there is no practical way
that we could muster the 30 person-years of effort likely needed
for a platform change without major innovation in either funding
or staffing. In contrast, issues of infrastructure support are
looming urgently on us (particularly for build and release
engineering) so that is where we could use the consulting help.
The funding originally devoted to platform consulting will likely
be diverted to infrastructure consulting.</p>
<p>As to the platform, the current plan A is to remain a
XUL/XPCOM/Gecko application keeping sync with mozilla-central as
long as is reasonably possible. So far, that has not been an
insurmountable burden, in spite of dire warnings a year ago that
XUL would be dead Real Soon Now. Eventually the day will come
where we cannot keep up on a daily/weekly basis, and we will be
forced to resync at intervals. When those intervals get
sufficiently long, we have de facto forked.</p>
<p>Long before that time, infrastructure issues will become serious.
FF seems determined to disable XUL addons in 2017, and it is not
reasonable to expect that the Mozilla addon team will continue to
support review and distribution of XUL addons for Thunderbird
(though we have no current plans to drop them). Each new
Thunderbird release reveals new surprises in build and release,
and we are on notice that they will not support us there
indefinitely. Those are much more urgent issues than platform.</p>
<p>At the same time, we are taking small steps to slowly convert
Thunderbird to web technologies, switching to JS in the backend
(JSMime and JSAccount) and HTML in the front end (Lightning work
on events in a tab, New Zealand student group on address book). As
our organization redesign gets moving, and we are able to muster
development resources, we might be able to start a serious
platform conversion effort in the not too distant future. <br>
</p>
<p>:rkent<br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/29/2016 9:37 AM, Eric Moore wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:1eccac06-b89a-8a5b-c616-0dfc09e4d940@fastmail.fm"
type="cite">
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<font face="Verdana"><font face="Verdana">Did an architect ever
get hired to help plan <font face="Verdana">Thunderbird's</font>
future? <font face="Verdana">The ad for the contract position
posted in April is gone<font face="Verdana">, but there has
been no news.<br>
<br>
<font face="Verdana">If one didn't get hired, what is plan
B? My impression was that many <font face="Verdana">strategic</font>
<font face="Verdana">decisions</font> were on hold,
waiting for the architects recommendations.</font><br>
</font></font></font></font> <br>
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</blockquote>
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