"On her weblog, Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker has announced that Mozilla Thunderbird is to move to a "new, separate organizational setting" as the Mozilla Foundation continues to focus ever more closely on Firefox. While the Mozilla Foundation supports a number of projects, its taxable subsidiary the Mozilla Corp. is responsible for only Firefox and Thunderbird. However, it has become increasingly clear that Firefox is the priority. The resources allocated to Firefox dwarf those allocated to Thunderbird and recent projects such as the initiative to improve Mozilla support exclude Thunderbird."
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Member since:2005-07-30
How can say that 3.0 is utter bloated shite, when it hasn't even reached beta stage? Are you judging from the alphas? Do you even realize that alpha's aren't even feature complete, let alone optimized?
How will Thunderbird become a worse application if it is managed by a separate organization? Have you considered that a spinning-off Thunderbird would actually give the devs more freedom to decide which what TB should develop (think integrating calender support).
I am disappointed by the responses of many of the readers. It seems illogical dislike of corporation and corporate behavior is the norm in much of the OSS world.
Mozilla's aim is to maintain a free open web. Spinning off Thunderbird is simply a tactical move to implement their general strategy. Like it or not, for the average user webmail is the way to access email. In terms of the bigger picture, spinning off Thunderbird makes sense both for Mozilla, Thunderbird and those of us who want an open accessible web.
The whole "Google is responsible for this!" is rabid bullshit. If you read Mitchell Baker's blog post on this issue, it becomes obvious that MoFo is simply looking for new ways to manage the Thunderbird project.
I applaud Mozilla's team for making tough decisions even when they go against populist mentality. Remember all the paranoia regarding the creation of the Mozilla Corporation? Where did that go? Nothing really changed, Mozilla simply got more flexible...
I applaud the Mozilla Foundation
Member since:2006-11-24
I wonder when Firefox becomes that big that it'll be forked into separate applications? They did it with Netscape/Mozilla, which they forked into Thunderbird, Firefox, Sunbird, Nvu, and Chatzilla. They then dumped Nvu and Chatzilla, and now Thunderbird and Sunbird/Lightning are on their way out as well.
So how big will Firefox get? Firefox will eventually reach that point where the thing will become more of a "web suite" than just a browser.
Wait a minute....have I coined a new term?!
Member since:2006-03-13
Firefox 1 was great.
Firefox 1 was somewhat unstable, and extension management wasn't so hot.
2 is O.K.
You missed 1.5, which had severe problems initially before stabilizing. 1.5 probably was the worst when it came to memory management.
2.0.0.5 incorporates good extension management, its pretty stable, and it doesn't keep gobbling RAM. On Linux, it's actually pretty fast.
3 is utter bloated shite.
3 is Alpha software. It's entitled to be "shite." Start complaining closer to the official release.
What I like best with both Thunderbird and Firefox is the ability to minimize security concerns. With Thunderbird, something as simple as turning off Javascript, and displaying all messages as plain text goes a long way to making it a secure app.
Firefox, when combined with extensions, lets me closely manage Javascript, Java, Flash, cookies, and third party inclusions. Coupled with a good response time for security flaws, and Firefox becomes the most secure browser out there.
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2006-08-29
Member since:
2005-08-26
Firefox 1 was great.
2 is O.K.
3 is utter bloated shite.
Thunderbird is actually a really freakin' good email application. I love it. If they could commit to integrating some decent calendar support, it'd be top-notch.
I hate you, Mozilla Foundation. You've bastardized everything.