<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"
id="docs-internal-guid-154b8989-6764-3a1a-5f35-99c9ede48b35"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Hello lovers of the Thunderbird!</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">It has been a while since I last sent a status update on council activities, and especially with the elections coming up we think it is important for you to know what we’ve been up to. I apologize for not having sent more frequent updates, but I can assure you it was not for lack of discussions. Much of what we discussed was around hiring, where it is hard to go into detail publicly. Nevertheless, more regular updates are important and I want to get back in the habit of sending them.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">In my last update in May, I spoke about two positions we were hiring for, a build engineer and a community manager. As you may know by now, we have successfully filled those two positions. It was not a simple task, because we received many great applications and needed to decide on the candidate that best fits the position. For the build engineer we had over 70 applications, and the community manager attracted over 400 (!) interested candidates. It took quite a while to go through all of the applications, but in the end I think we made great choices.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Let me spend a paragraph on the decision process for the community manager (CM), as in my last update this was not yet clear. Back at the time, the council was not in agreement over what his role would look like. Some believed that the role would not be helpful, or that we could not provide our CM with the necessary tools to successfully do their job. Others were unclear what background the candidate should come from, for example should the focus be on pure social and community activities, or rather a marketing expert? We also wanted to have someone to engage with those donating to Thunderbird, but some believed this should not be the focus. We were in agreement that the CM should engage our community and make sure they have the best possible means to take part. In the end we agreed on what you were able to see in the job requisition, which is a little bit of everything. The candidate we decided for fits the profile and we agree that hiring this role was worth it.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">At the time we were also discussing about the developer position we’ve just released [1]. We all agreed we’d need more developers to make reasonable progress. Hiring from start to finish is a considerable time investment, we determined we could not reasonably hire more than one role at a time. Therefore we decided to concentrate on supporting and growing our community with the CM.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">The last council update was also before the financial home announcement. We worked with representatives of the other options we considered to let them know about our decision, and also with the Mozilla Foundation to make sure they agree with the announcement we wanted to make. You can read the rest on the blog </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">[2] if you haven't already.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">The Mozilla Foundation has been very supportive and is making best effort to allow us to operate independently. Nevertheless, there have been some roadblocks that we are working to overcome. While are able to hire contractors for defined period of time, hiring employees or contractors for longer-term projects proves to be difficult through direct engagement. Both is now possible through UpWork, and we are working with further partners to improve Thunderbird hiring. There were also some process issues on how Thunderbird and the council can successfully operate within the Foundation, but with Josh Wolf, the Foundation’s new director of operations, we are confident that the remaining issues are on the way of being solved.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Another topic we have been discussing with MoFo is donations and what we can do to improve in that area. Many of our donors are from the EU and based on the support requests we have been getting, there are a fair amount of donors that prefer SEPA bank transfers over PayPal and credit cards. The Foundation has set up means to allow SEPA donations for Thunderbird [3]. There is still a $5 processing fee imposed by their bank, but the team is working hard on minimizing or removing this fee as well.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">On the governance side, we have created the maildev list [4], because we feel that especially discussions such as Thunderbird’s technical future should not happen without community involvement. We also worked on preparing the upcoming council vote, which will provide an opportunity for fresh input to our council work.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Looking into the future, I’d like to tell you more about our plans for 2018. We have a ton of ideas, but are still working out the priorities and details so please see this as a non-conclusive collection of ideas:</span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">We are considering to hire an executive director for Thunderbird. The council is very dedicated, but given we are volunteering our efforts, it is hard to make quicker progress on some of the issues. Having someone invest 40 hours a week on giving Thunderbird direction is much more than a group of 7 can do (and coordinate) in their free time. The council would serve more as a board and ensure that the director is acting on behalf of the Thunderbird Community. This decision is not yet set though, and there is much more to this than I can fit in a simple status update, both pros and cons.</span></p></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">If we don’t head for an executive director, we will need someone in a managing position, like a technical manager. The more developers (and other roles) we hire, the harder it will be to give them the direction and support that they would expect from their management, which is currently the council. Luckily those we have hired are very independent and are making the right decisions for the project in their field, but we would like to support them more than we are doing now.</span></p></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">As mentioned earlier, we are now hiring for one or more developers. This is part of the plan to provide Thunderbird with a bright future, but it will require some experimentation and prototyping. There has been discussion on a full rewrite vs. a gradual change and the opinions are a bit split on this. To make progress on this issue we are going to test the options with the Thunderbird address book. This project is fairly secluded from the rest of Thunderbird, which makes it an ideal candidate for a rewrite. Still, it will need to be integrated with the rest of Thunderbird, which allows to experiment with the more gradual approach.</span></p></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Increase our yearly income. We have received great donation support from those who believe in Thunderbird. If we want to make substantial improvements to Thunderbird, regardless of if we head for a rewrite or if we take the more gradual approach, we will need to increase our earnings so we can hire more staff. We will be working more actively on increasing donations and looking into partnerships.</span></p></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Move more infrastructure away from Mozilla Corporation services. Over time we will need to be independent of Mozilla on the infrastructure side, so we will continue to determine which services we can migrate to our own services. This includes areas such as add-ons, crash reporting, or build systems.</span></p></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Improve business support interactions with the Mozilla Foundation. As mentioned earlier, there are some roadblocks that we need to remove when working with MoFo. We will be working with MoFo to determine where support can be improved and how, as well as exploring opportunities with partners to ensure that we have the best possible business support.</span></p></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">More regular updates. I’ve said this before, but I want to mention it again. I want to make sure we provide you with regular updates and will encourage the council to support me in this effort.</span></p></li>
</ul>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Thank you for taking the time to read this super long post. We'd love to hear your feedback to make sure we are heading in the right direction. Whatever we do, it would not be possible without the help of the community. We are looking forward to the upcoming elections, which will also provide others an opportunity to join the council and take part in forming the future of Thunderbird.</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Kind Regards</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Philipp, on behalf of the Thunderbird Council</span></p>
<br>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">[1] </span><a
href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tb-planning/NcQ9LrOdbPk"
style="text-decoration:none;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:underline;-webkit-text-decoration-skip:none;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tb-planning/NcQ9LrOdbPk</span></a></p>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">[2] </span><a
href="https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/"
style="text-decoration:none;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:underline;-webkit-text-decoration-skip:none;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/</span></a></p>
<p dir="ltr"
style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">[3] </span><a
href="https://donate.mozilla.org/thunderbird/faq#item_2"
style="text-decoration:none;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:underline;-webkit-text-decoration-skip:none;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">https://donate.mozilla.org/thunderbird/faq#item_2</span></a></p>
<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">[4] </span><a
href="http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net"
style="text-decoration:none;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:underline;-webkit-text-decoration-skip:none;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net</span></a>
</body>
</html>