Mozilla to move Thunderbird

MarcLister · 27 Jul 2007 at 12:36

Mozilla have announced plans to seperate Thunderbird from Mozilla/Firefox by moving the email client to a new organisation it seems.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41270
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=22235

More proof if needed that Mozilla don't consider TB a priority, unless the benefit of moving to a new company means that TB will be the only priority and would therefore benefit from 100% attention.

Scythe · 27 Jul 2007 at 13:17

Sounds like bad news, i think they shouldnt change thunderbird, great app imo

MarcLister · 27 Jul 2007 at 13:19

I wholeheartedly agree with you; it just sounds like Mozilla want rid of Thunderbird to concentrate on Firefox. Makes Thunderbird look like the second rate citizen. And considering the competition or lack of in the email client market this just seems really silly. Firefox is up against IE, Opera, Netscape, Flock etc.

Fr0dders · 27 Jul 2007 at 13:28

how much of a market for Thunderbird is there though ?

just about every corporate setup consists of Exchange Server with Clients running Office with Outlook.

so many corporate setups use this its silly. And with home users, the vast majority of home internet users are of the itunes generation, that really only got the internet to download music from itunes and sign upto myspace etc..

This generation of users probably doesnt even use a mail client, and instead will use hotmail / yahoo mail with their IM account.

The number of users that care enough about their home pop3 client to change to thunderbird through dissatisfaction is quite small compared to the market for Firefox i feel.

MarcLister · 27 Jul 2007 at 13:29

MrLOL said:
how much of a market for Thunderbird is there though ?

Easy answer? Every single computer running Windows or Linux.

MrLOL said:
just about every corporate setup consists of Exchange Server with Clients running Office with Outlook.

so many corporate setups use this its silly. And with home users, the vast majority of home internet users are of the itunes generation, that really only got the internet to download music from itunes and sign upto myspace etc..

This generation of users probably doesnt even use a mail client, and instead will use hotmail / yahoo mail with their IM account.

The number of users that care enough about their home pop3 client to change to thunderbird through dissatisfaction is quite small compared to the market for Firefox i feel.

Yes I can see that.

Vai · 27 Jul 2007 at 14:15

MrLOL said:
how much of a market for Thunderbird is there though ?

just about every corporate setup consists of Exchange Server with Clients running Office with Outlook.

so many corporate setups use this its silly. And with home users, the vast majority of home internet users are of the itunes generation, that really only got the internet to download music from itunes and sign upto myspace etc..

This generation of users probably doesnt even use a mail client, and instead will use hotmail / yahoo mail with their IM account.

The number of users that care enough about their home pop3 client to change to thunderbird through dissatisfaction is quite small compared to the market for Firefox i feel.

I don't think there is much of a market for Thunderbird on Windows either.

When Firefox came out IE6 was terrible, Firefox was so much better that it quickly gained popularity. However if Firefox had been released around the same time as IE7 I don't think it could have taken off like it has.

On the other hand Outlook is actually very good, it would be difficult for Thunderbird to improve on it (IMO), and the extra features you get with Exchange make many businesses dependant on it.

MarcLister · 27 Jul 2007 at 14:47

Vai said:
the extra features you get with Exchange make many businesses dependant on it.

I've never had the chance to use Thunderbird with Exchange. What does Outlook + Exchange offer then? Honestly thought you could use Exchange with Thunderbird? :confused:

Vai · 27 Jul 2007 at 15:14

MarcLister said:
I've never had the chance to use Thunderbird with Exchange. What does Outlook + Exchange offer then? Honestly thought you could use Exchange with Thunderbird?

Things like public folders, viewing other people's calendars, booking resources for meetings, users being able to set out of office replies, recovering deleted items from Outlook.
There is probably a lot more, but I use public folders and the extra calendar/meeting functions every day. I wouldn't be able to to my job without them.

I haven't used Thunderbird with Exchange either, but I doubt you would get more than basic email functionality when using it.