ThunderBird and MyApp

[ArbolOne]

I am writing an application that collects data about clients. I would
like to write directly to a file that ThunderBird (TB) can also read.
My application will have, or collect, all the data that TB collects in
"Address Book" as well as all the information in the "Calendar" add-
on.
My intention is to have my users enter data on a simple window, but
view the data in a graphically robust application like TB.
Some of data is already available in the form of a database, I will
extract these data and format it to TB file format, when new batches
of data come, a data entry will use my data-entry-application to enter
the new data.
In case you are wondering why not use TB to directly enter the data,
well, my application is swift, dry and driven as well as cater to the
companies needs.

Can anyone help?
Is what I am trying even legal?

Thanks in advance

[Jack Klein]

On Fri, 9 Oct 2009 09:21:07 -0700 (PDT), ArbolOne <arbo...@gmail.com>
wrote in alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++:

You do realize that Thunderbird is 100% open source, don't you?

If you don't know what that means, it means you can download the
complete source code from mozilla.org.

You can study that source code, modify it, replace parts of it with
your own, build your own program based around some or all of that
source.

About the only limitation is that, if you sell the application
commercially, you have to make the source code available, both the
original and yours, under the terms of the GPL license.

--
Jack Klein http://JK-Technology.Com
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[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Jack Klein:

> On Fri, 9 Oct 2009 09:21:07 -0700 (PDT), ArbolOne <arbo...@gmail.com>
> wrote in alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++:
>
>> I am writing an application that collects data about clients. I would
>> like to write directly to a file that ThunderBird (TB) can also read.
>> My application will have, or collect, all the data that TB collects in
>> "Address Book" as well as all the information in the "Calendar" add-
>> on.
>> My intention is to have my users enter data on a simple window, but
>> view the data in a graphically robust application like TB.
>> Some of data is already available in the form of a database, I will
>> extract these data and format it to TB file format, when new batches
>> of data come, a data entry will use my data-entry-application to enter
>> the new data.
>> In case you are wondering why not use TB to directly enter the data,
>> well, my application is swift, dry and driven as well as cater to the
>> companies needs.
>>
>> Can anyone help?
>> Is what I am trying even legal?
>
> You do realize that Thunderbird is 100% open source, don't you?
>
> If you don't know what that means, it means you can download the
> complete source code from mozilla.org.
>
> You can study that source code, modify it, replace parts of it with
> your own, build your own program based around some or all of that
> source.

More relevant than open source is the fact that TB is scriptable. :-)

I haven't done much file handling in TB (only indirect by using an XML parser,
with my data in an XML format) but it's easy to do GUI stuff.

Don't do in C++ what you can do very easily in a script language, unless you
really love to do it in C++.

Cheers & hth.,

- Alf