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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/22/20 4:28 PM, Eyal Rozenberg
wrote:<br>
</div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c0074dd2-f5b8-5643-8326-5931caedbdf8@technion.ac.il">3.
"Unfortunately Mozilla were not interested" - it wasn't
"unfortunate" at all. It's not as though we all wanted to get back
into Mozilla. For those who were not around back then: After
_years_ of starving Mail&News of funding and personnel in
favor of the browser, Mozilla finally cut us loose a number of
years back to fend for ourselves.
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>OK, let's beat this long buried dead horse - which should stay
buried IMO but apparently it isn't. First, email was never
Mozilla Corporation's primary focus. Second, it gave it a big
opportunity by creating Mozilla Messaging with a singular purpose,
autonomous, and with a goal, but for better or worse it failed to
meet the goal. Then it had a second life under new management.
And it would have probably done OK for many years even with that
reduced staff. For some reasons MoCo then made a business decision
- not out of some hateful malice or dislike. (Those of us who know
many MoCo people also know there are many Thunderbird fans at
every level of the organization. Yes, really, even to the top.) -
and it was given to the community, WITH significant resources -
SUMO, bugzilla, CI, crash reporting services, etc worth hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Is that what people are up in arms
about? That MoCo killed Thunderbird? Clearly that hasn't
happened, has it? Just maybe, in retrospect, MoCo sowed the seeds
for our current success?<br>
</p>
<p>Now, you may not like how MoCo handled it. You may be resentful.
You may even hate them. But you cannot possibly say that
Thunderbird hasn't had it's chances in the MoCo umbrella or that
it has starved it out of existence (it obviously exists), or that
it isn't supporting it today, this very day - or do you want to
give back the hundreds of thousands of dollars in infra support it
provided since we became community based? It may not have
supported it the way you or others wanted. But to say Thunderbird
hasn't been significantly supported by MoCo, at any point on the
last 15 years, is factually false. <br>
</p>
<p>Today Thunderbird is obviously supported in principle and
substance by MoFo. But not because they want to run us. MoFO did
not choose us, WE CHOSE MOFO. It has been affirmed by two board
terms - most recently by deciding to stay with MoFo under a corp.
And the previous decision to choose MoFo as the financial and
legal home - a decision that didn't come suddenly because of some
report, nor alleged personal affection or allegiance to Mozilla -
it came after multiple years of investigation and discussion (and
multiple board terms), after hours of background work done by many
board members - no doubt collectively hundreds of hours,
including important contributions by those who disagreed with the
choice, and noteworthy, perhaps most by Kent who actually traveled
cross country to meet people who might be our potential home,
giving us several potential options. So this was no seat of the
pants, easy decision. (I wish every blogger would correct their
postings that Mozilla simply "took us back".) And they do not run
us - isn't that great? That's what we wanted. That's what MoFo
wants for us. We hire, we make financial decisions and manage our
income, we make strategic decisions, we have expanded, we are
poised to make partnerships, the number of users continues to grow
(as it has steadily over recent years), the add-ons community is
revitalized (sure, with major changes and not without pain). The
list could go on.<br>
</p>
<p>I would hate to think that we would give up this success because
some people dislike they way things have happened with MoCo and
Thunderbird, or some idea that Firefox is not doing well or took a
direction they dislike. <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c0074dd2-f5b8-5643-8326-5931caedbdf8@technion.ac.il">4.
We didn't "find ourselves in square one". We commissioned a report
in 2016, which presents several options:
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://blog.thunderbird.net/files/2016/04/Finding-a-Home-for-Thunderbird.pdf">https://blog.thunderbird.net/files/2016/04/Finding-a-Home-for-Thunderbird.pdf</a>
<br>
<br>
Instead of explaining why we actually made the choice we made,
you're trying to present it as a non-choice.
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>You are absolutely right here - the community didn't have an
opportunity to make an up or down vote on the choice. Do you
really think those who voted for MoFo thought that the <u>majority</u>
of users and <u>majority</u> community would disagree? How
exactly do you suggest that a community vote would occurred? And
would it have been binding on the board? And on what basis would
the board offer such a vote given the charter set out by the 2014
summit that empowered the board to make decisions? (Hint,
multiple boards discussed these things. I dare say knew they would
take some heat for how it was done. Did they fail at times in
communications - yeah, likely. But it's done, buried, past
history. If you don't like it, vote out everyone who was involved
in this successful venture, as is your right.)</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c0074dd2-f5b8-5643-8326-5931caedbdf8@technion.ac.il">
<br>
And us being "owned" by Mozilla is a problem which needs to be
mitigated by strong guarantees of autonomy - which I don't even
know we have.<br>
</blockquote>
<p>Let's try this question rather than deal in FUD - have you or
anyone even once heard any board member in public or private say
that MoCo or MoFo has forced or tried to force, or influence, a
board member or a board decision?</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c0074dd2-f5b8-5643-8326-5931caedbdf8@technion.ac.il">
<br>
<br>
On 22/09/2020 22:56, Magnus Melin wrote:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Sorry but you're looking at it from an
incorrect angle. Let me explain:
<br>
From back then, it was always a big problem that Thunderbird
did not
<br>
have it's own company behind it. Now, to create a company, a
company
<br>
that gets the appropriate trademark rights etc so that it can
actually
<br>
operate, you need an *owner* of that that company!
Unfortunately,
<br>
Mozilla - back then - were not interested in being the owner.
But if
<br>
they were to hand it to someone else, who exactly would the
owners be?
<br>
You see, there's a huge conundrum here.
<br>
<br>
You can go around this problem a few times, and then you always
find
<br>
yourself back to square one. When the opportunity presented
itself that
<br>
Mozilla could, after all, be the owner of the company behind
<br>
Thunderbird, that solved this problem the only way it could be
solved to
<br>
be solved well. There was never much of a question of what to do
from
<br>
that point on.
<br>
<br>
-Magnus
<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote>
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