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<p>Hi guys,</p>
<p>This thread sounds like fun. So let's talk it through. I'll try
to lay out the status of the project from how I see it and the
challenges we face going forward. I did make a <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2019/01/thunderbird-in-2019/">blog
post in January</a> laying out some plans for 2019.<br>
</p>
<p>One thing I laid out in my council candidacy is that we need to
establish a vision. I am iterating on a vision I presented to the
council in Q4 of last year and will present it to the new council
when elections are finished. I'll address this more below in
response to "Thunderbird NEXT".<br>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">Just right now I think a who is actually
working on Thunderbird might be a good bit of information.
There are now about the same number of employees as there are
council members. Who do we contact about what? What are they
doing?</blockquote>
We hired quite a few people in a short amount of time, but I am
planning on detailing some information about the new staff on our
blog and on this mailing list over the coming weeks.
Organizationally, I think the Thunderbird team is learning how to
do onboarding and get our hires plugged in as we've gone from 5
staff to 12 in the span of half a year.</p>
<p>It sounds like I might need to accelerate this as there is a lot
of interest leading up to the election.<br>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite"> Does Thunderbird have developers working
on the lack of features.</blockquote>
Yes, Magnus posted what we were hiring for on the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://lists.thunderbird.net/pipermail/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net/2018-October/001317.html">maildev
mailing list</a>. One of those things is better operating system
integration, specifically on Windows and better support for
standards like CardDAV/CalDAV. But as I said above, some of those
folks are just starting - so it may take some time for them to get
up to speed and start getting new code in the door.</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">We heard a lot about Thunderbird NEXT some
time ago, so are we doing a rewrite? Either wholesale or
component by component. What is the road map for that process?</blockquote>
The Thunderbird NEXT discussion was before I was involved in the
project, but based on the work we've been doing the past year and
Magnus' hiring plan above - we have been addressing platform
breakage and paying down technical debt. There does not appear to
be enough support on the council currently to start fresh, so
we've lived under the assumption that we will stay on the Mozilla
platform. The good news is we finally have our head above water
and are able to look at how we can innovate and move forward in
significant ways. We had success in increasing donations
significantly - so that certainly helps (ala the staff noted
above).</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">Are we going to stick with the term web
extension to describe Thunderbird extensions or are we going to
rebrand it something relevant like mail extensions as it should
have far more "local" access that web extensions do if it is
going to be a strong and useful API. Retaining the term web
extensions also lead new developers that have web extensions
experience to think they know the environment. They will not.</blockquote>
I want to call them "MailExtensions" and get good documentation
out the door, especially tutorials that help new add-on developers
get involved.</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">Thunderbird is moving forward, and I am
seeing a lot of positive moves. But where we are going appears
to be a very closely guarded path.</blockquote>
Agreed, maybe more of these conversations that we have on the
council and in the community + staff status meetings on Tuesday
should be happening on tb-planning. Especially if that helps with
the implementation of those ideas. </p>
<p>This is as much as I can get out of my head at the moment. I'll
work to share more as soon as possible.<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Ryan Sipes
Community Manager
Thunderbird</pre>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/2/19 7:52 PM, Matt Harris wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:2421eb7a-0f4f-1f78-9b65-a2bfc676b7df@gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Just right now I think a who is
actually working on Thunderbird might be a good bit of
information. There are now about the same number of employees
as there are council members. Who do we contact about what?
What are they doing? <br>
<br>
Does Thunderbird have developers working on the lack of
features. Things like 2FA authentication ALA Outlook. Windows
people app integration. Categorisation of accounts (work home
etc) address book list in the main pane that provides a one
click access to mails from the contact or some oldie but
goodies, real tabs, full calendar integration, latest card_dav
support for import and export, provide a profile import and
export and ActiveSync support for mail and calendars.<br>
<br>
We heard a lot about Thunderbird NEXT some time ago, so are we
doing a rewrite? Either wholesale or component by component.
What is the road map for that process? <br>
<br>
Are we going to stick with the term web extension to describe
Thunderbird extensions or are we going to rebrand it something
relevant like mail extensions as it should have far more "local"
access that web extensions do if it is going to be a strong and
useful API. Retaining the term web extensions also lead new
developers that have web extensions experience to think they
know the environment. They will not.<br>
<br>
Thunderbird is moving forward, and I am seeing a lot of positive
moves. But where we are going appears to be a very closely
guarded path.<br>
<br>
<br>
Matt<br>
<br>
<br>
On 02-Mar-19 4:09 AM, Eyal Rozenberg wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:fad977d9-3cca-5e09-cf77-d11bcfcdfd58@technion.ac.il">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Motivation:
So, someone just asked on the elections list for our council's current
composition, and what we are able to give is just this:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird#Thunderbird_Council" moz-do-not-send="true">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird#Thunderbird_Council</a>
which doesn't cut it.
If I visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.thunderbird.net/" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.thunderbird.net/</a> , I should be able to readily
access information about the organizational infrastructure behind
Thunderbird, including information about the Thunderbird council, its
its role, its composition, its members background - as a minimum. But -
this information is not accessible nor does it seem to exist, i.e. I
can't find a page about that anywhere.
In fact, if I click the small "about" link, what I get is the Mozilla
Foundation:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/</a>
whose navigation bar / menus will essentially tell me Thunderbird
doesn't exist and there's only Firefox.
If I go back to our website, I don't see what would be telling me "Hey,
I'm not dead yet! I'm getting better!" (Monty Python reference there,
sorry.)
If click the twitter user link:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=mozthunderbird" moz-do-not-send="true">https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=mozthunderbird</a>
I see few tweets and their nature also hints at us being sort of near death.
Just saying,
Eyal
PS - It's not that the website is not reasonably-nicely-designed.
_______________________________________________
tb-planning mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org" moz-do-not-send="true">tb-planning@mozilla.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning" moz-do-not-send="true">https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.” <i>―
Friedrich von Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans </i></div>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
tb-planning mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tb-planning@mozilla.org">tb-planning@mozilla.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning">https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
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