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Mozilla Corporation: Thunderbird “a tax” on Firefox Development

posted by n1 on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the focused-user-experience dept.

"joekiser" writes:

In this Ars Technica article, Mozilla Corporation Chair Mitchell Baker discloses the desire to drop the Thunderbird email client altogether.

"Many inside of Mozilla, including an overwhelming majority of our leadership, feel the need to be laser-focused on activities like Firefox that can have an industry-wide impact." Baker writes. "With all due respect to Thunderbird and the Thunderbird community, we have been clear for years that we do not view Thunderbird as having this sort of potential."

Thunderbird has already been demoted to second-tier status, receiving only security updates since the summer of 2012. Baker's plan would turn Thunderbird over to a community product, similar to what happened with the Mozilla Suite a decade ago.

Is Mozilla's decision to laser-focus on improving Firefox going to stop their dwindling market share? Who else, besides the submitter, is still using Thunderbird? And where will you go once Thunderbird is no longer supported?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:05AM

    by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:05AM (#270549)

    Improving Firefox? That's not exactly what I'd call the recent years' worth of changes in many (most?) of its areas... It's almost as bland and yuck as the other browsers now (Chrome, Safari, Edge). The only thing that's keeping it ahead are things like NoScript, ABP and Firebug, imnsho.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by inertnet on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:51AM

    by inertnet (4071) on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:51AM (#270562) Journal

    I moved to Pale Moon when they "improved" the Firefox UI and never went back. All those add-ons like NoScript work fine in Pale Moon and I still get the original UI that didn't need fixing.

    Looks like it's about time to migrate from Thunderbird to FossaMail as well.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:22PM (#270937)

      Good thing you have excellent health and don't need any accessibility features. The sole Pale Moon developer considered those features too much of a burden to keep and cut them out.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:24PM (#270661)

    They are improving Firefox by ripping out all of what made Firefox, Firefox and replacing it will Chrome innards. I think the goal is one day have Firefox be a skin for Chrome. That way everyone can sit on their asses and collect a check. Thunderbird is something that they can't rip off from anyone else, so naturally, it must die.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:15PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:15PM (#270928)

    And they're even talking about replacing the extension system now.

    Goodbye last feature that makes Firefox useful

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"