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<div id="newHeaderAG1" style="font-size: x-small; padding:1em;
background-color:rgba(220,220,240,0.4); border-radius:3px;"> <b>Subject:</b>Re:
Fwd: Buggy add-ons causing malfunctions of Thunderbird -
Policy to disable them, do we have one, do we need one?<br>
<b>From:</b>Ben Bucksch <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ben.bucksch@beonex.com"><ben.bucksch@beonex.com></a><br>
<b>To:</b><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org"><tb-planning@mozilla.org></a> <br>
<b>Sent: </b>Monday, 12/3/2018 22:12 GMT ST +0000 [Week 49]<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c38cfd81-8f4a-227a-30e5-5904ced336c3@beonex.com"
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Ryan Sipes wrote on 03.12.18 22:58:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a66291aa-e675-c313-9b02-f4d0fe465404@thunderbird.net"
id="mid_a66291aa_e675_c313_9b02_f4d0fe465404_thunderbird_net"
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<p>I couldn't agree more.</p>
<p>Last week I pledged to lead an effort to set up an "Add-ons
Steering Committee", a group that could get together and talk
through the add-ons situation as it stands and propose some
ideas on how we might best address problems in the Thunderbird
add-ons community.</p>
<p>What does this list think of that idea? I've begun talking
about an effort to update documentation for add-on developers
(with new tutorials and maybe even a pretty, detailed landing
page <a href="https://developer.elementary.io/"
moz-do-not-send="true">like other projects have done</a>).</p>
<p>Since this is an area where there appears to be a lot of
passion, I would hope that we have volunteers who would be
willing to participate.<br>
</p>
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<p><br>
</p>
<p>Yes. that would be nice. Condition for joining should be that
you're not only addon developer, but willing to actively
participate in the implementation of new APIs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would agree that it would be nice, but this also means to add
some non-technical ways of doing that. (a lot of people may
associate this with writing patches, which is out of reach for
most Add-on developers). So I would say encourage it by giving
different options within that task such as telling which legacy
interfaces they currently use.</p>
<p>Existing Add-on owners / maintainers may not have that much
technical expertise or spare time (I adopted a few Add-ons, so I
know there are quite a few useful Add-ons without active
developers). Maybe an Add-on orphanage would be a nice addition.</p>
<p>Also we should have (and encourage) discussions about
monetization as this will necessarily increase quality and
longevity of Add-ons.</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c38cfd81-8f4a-227a-30e5-5904ced336c3@beonex.com"
id="mid_c38cfd81_8f4a_227a_30e5_5904ced336c3_beonex_com" class="
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<p> </p>
<p>I think WebExperiments are a also great opportunity for
grass-roots action.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That would be a nice addition to attract new people to the
Add-ons sphere. but it should not be featured as a replacement for
legacy, just as Web Extensions are. Let's focus on the replacement
APIs first, if you tell people you have to write a web extension,
a lot of the existing Add-ons authors will walk away. <br>
</p>
<p>So even if we end up rewriting our ADd-ons as web extensions, I
suggest label it in a more neutral way, such as "future proof your
Add-on" and emphasize the transition away from XPCOM into APIs.
Fact is that it is still impossible to write a web extension that
does a lot of the useful stuff we are used to do in the mail <b>desktop
</b>environment. In my mind APIs must support desktop centric
features, that's why I am a little unhappy about the brand
"web"-extension.<br>
</p>
<p>Axel<br>
</p>
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