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<p>Hey,</p>
<p>I'll try to lay out my logic for ensuring create a new account
stays prominent in setup and why I think it is important going
forward:</p>
<p>1.) As laid out in the Council elections, there will likely be
changes that allow us to focus more on partnerships and other
lines of revenue beyond donations. I saw Ben's post about this
being less than 1% in the past. But I have some numbers that seem
to indicate it is higher than that.<br>
</p>
<p>2.) Right now we don't sell the user on why they should use a
provider, and there are potential partners that have great
features (that work great with Thunderbird) which we could
highlight if they are looking for a new account. I think making a
new account a compelling option would allow us to get revenue from
this and help move people off of providers with a surveillance
model of business (*cough* Gmail *cough*).</p>
<p>As Charles points out below, there are other potential services
that Thunderbird could be considering. As I laid out in election,
under the Foundation we can't really consider that. But we may be
able to in the future as we continue discussions around
organizational changes for Thunderbird.</p>
<p>I think we could move any discussion around this to another
thread, but to put a cap on the new account creation in
Thunderbird - I would like an opportunity to iterate on this in
the product and make it a value add by introducing users to BETTER
providers than they might be using. Also, based on the revenue
gained from this last year - there are quite a few folks who
explore a new account.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-signature">Ryan Sipes
<br>
<small>Community and Business Development Manager</small>
<br>
<a href="https://thunderbird.net">Thunderbird</a><br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/1/19 11:23 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:d445203a-7980-752a-b921-415214a992a5@libertytrek.org">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Re-sending...<br>
<br>
On Tue Apr 30 2019 13:23:40 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time),
Alessandro Castellani <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:alessandro@thunderbird.net"
moz-do-not-send="true"><alessandro@thunderbird.net></a>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:da075632-6fb2-4290-87cd-c534568eb785@thunderbird.net">I
implemented that secondary button as Ryan told me there are
potential partnerships happening with various email providers.
Offering a "spotlight" placement in TB is pretty important in
order to close profitable deals with email providers, opposed to
something like "We're gonna put a link on one of our web pages".
We need a stronger selling point.</blockquote>
<br>
Makes sense, and I certainly agree we need a stronger selling
point, and this looks like a great thread and opportunity to
repost something I sent over a year ago to this list (didn't get
a single response then, maybe it will fare better this time
around).<br>
<br>
So, here we go (I tweaked it a little)... and remember, this was
written over a year ago...<br>
<br>
Think of this as something offered on the Account Creation
dialog/wizard currently being discussed.<br>
<br>
***<br>
<br>
In my opinion revenue generation is probably the single most
important issue facing TB now, and I am very excited, surprised
even, at Kent's report of current donation levels (even more so
now, remember, this was originally written in February of last
year), so I'll take this opportunity to put forward an idea
(again) I had some time ago when these discussions first started
(I sent it but it never made it to the list, not sure why). This
would (in my opinion) generate substantially more revenue, because
people would actually be getting something meaningful in return,
and it would also help promote the Thunderbird Brand/Identity.<br>
<br>
Since Thunderbird will require its own infrastructure sooner or
later, why not develop and provide something I'll call, for lack
of a better term, a 'Thunderbird Hosted Communications Hub',
providing a service available only to those who choose to become
financial contributors. This would basically just consist of at
least one thunderbird.net (or whatever cool Thunderbird oriented
domain is chosen) email address, and hopefully/eventually some
cool features showcasing Thunderbirds capabilities (see below). I
would suggest 2 or 3 different levels, e.g.:<br>
<ul>
<li>One time smallish contributors get a 'Basic' account, one
email address (@thunderbird.net, or whatever other coolish
Thunderbird related domain you want), low storage (1GB?), no
IMAP</li>
<li>Large one time contributors get much more storage (100GB
total?), maybe additional multiple email addresses and IMAP
access</li>
<li>Supporters who opt to provide a certain level of recurring
donations get unlimited storage/email addresses and IMAP and
Chat support</li>
</ul>
<p>There is a lot of potential for new services to attract even
more supporters:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>To really make this more compelling, I think it should offer
something unique, and I can't think of anything better than
full JMAP support, especially considering it is intended to
both replace IMAP, and by nature to be extensible. How about
an extension out of the box that allows you to Sync everything
(including your Profile/Settings) to a server that supports it
(does anyone remember that something similar was actually
possible using LDAP way back in t he Netscape days?)?</li>
<li>How about a partnership with Timo and the Dovecot guys to
provide the IMAP/JMAP Server support? I know he is working on
it<br>
</li>
<li>And how about a partnership with the SOGo team to provide
Groupware (Contacts/Calendars) support?</li>
<li>Sync capability (see my comment below for details)</li>
<li>Opt-in offerings to help test new/beta features (like for
the hopefully upcoming JMAP support, that Dovecot is currently
working on)</li>
</ul>
<p>There was more, but the only other part I would include in this
email is this, that was in response to the question 'Where do
you see Thunderbird in 10 years?':</p>
<p>Pluggable Protocol Support - It should be easy to add - via an
Addon/Extension and/or to the core code, support for:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>New/next-generation protocols like JMAP (replacing
IMAP+SMTP, and eventually Cal/CardDAV), and *eventually* (but
not until existing functionality + maybe JMAP support, is
fully replaced and rock solid) others like Text/Chat (Signal,
WhatsApp, and/or even a native Mozilla/Thunderbird one the
service for which is provided by the 'Thunderbird
Communications Platform' referred to above under my general
comments)</li>
<li>Pure server-side indexes like those provided by dovecot
eliminating the need for GLODA (for IMAP/JMAP users) and the
heavy (for some, unworkable) requirements - ie, must maintain
a fully local copy of all emails, making it less than useless
for heavy IMAP users with large mail stores</li>
<li>Full support for Server-Side filters (Sieve)</li>
<li>Support for managing Dovecot's Server Side Virtual Folders
(Virtual Folders everywhere, as opposed to Thunderbird's
local-only Virtual Folders (an excellent, but limited concept
when you use many different computers/systems to access your
email)</li>
<li>Native Sync capability(JSON?) for Contacts/Calendars for use
with the 'Thunderbird Communications Hub', or even your own
server (SFTP/WebDAV?) for security/privacy</li>
<li>Modular HTML composer/renderer support</li>
<ul>
<li>instead of reinventing the wheel, just provide hooks to
some of the more popular existing HTML composers (TinyMCE,
Quill, etc) and web engines (Quantum, Blink,
EdgeHTML(/Trident?), Webkit), and make it easy to switch
between them should the need ever arise - or to even strip
support for it (HTML rendering for emails) out completely if
desired, reducing everything to plain text automatically (I
know some people who prefer Claws Mail for that one reason)<br>
</li>
</ul>
<li>I personally don't use newsgroups, but once the heavy
lifting of making things modular is done, support could be
properly implemented by anyone willing to do the work.</li>
</ul>
<p>Anyway, that's it. I hope you see something here of value. If
not, no worries, I thank you for your time, and for everything
you are doing for Thunderbird.</p>
<p>Charles<br>
</p>
<br>
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