Fwd: Re: Change of release and governance model for Thunderbird

[Unicorn.Consulting]

Forward of one contributors concerns.  Concerns that I to share.
Matt

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: Change of release and governance model for Thunderbird
Date:	Sat, 7 Jul 2012 23:13:29 +0200
From:	Vincent <el.cam...@gmail.com>

In fact, I have some very concrete questions when I think to it a little bit:

1. Will we see Mike complete the new address book?
2. Will there finally be a switch to mdir instead of mbox? I don't imagine that the community would be able to do such a switch...
3. Contribution by Summer of code's students are really great. As I don't think that "the community" will be able to manage students, will there be project driven by Mozilla about Thunderbird in 2013?
4. What about SUMO? Is it still planned to merged it with Firefox support's articles?
   

I should say that I am quite frightened too...
--
Vincent (caméléon)

[Mark Banner]

On 08/07/2012 09:10, Unicorn.Consulting wrote:

From:	Vincent <el.cam...@gmail.com>

In fact, I have some very concrete questions when I think to it a little bit:

1. Will we see Mike complete the new address book?
2. Will there finally be a switch to mdir instead of mbox? I don't imagine that the community would be able to do such a switch...

I think the other thread will start to answer these, but I can't say for certain. I know David still wants to be able to finish the switch to maildir.

1. Contribution by Summer of code's students are really great. As I don't think that "the community" will be able to manage students, will there be project driven by Mozilla about Thunderbird in 2013?

We've had one GSoC student this year that has been managed by a community member. I think its possible that there could be more community management next year. Note that in past years (I'm not sure about this year), SeaMonkey has also had members manage projects in GSoC.

1. What about SUMO? Is it still planned to merged it with Firefox support's articles?
   

That's an ongoing discussion, but we'll try and post more details soon.

Mark.

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Mark Banner aber hob zu reden an und schrieb:
>> 1. Contribution by Summer of code's students are really great. As I

>> don't think that "the community" will be able to manage students,
>> will there be project driven by Mozilla about Thunderbird in 2013?
>>
> We've had one GSoC student this year that has been managed by a
> community member. I think its possible that there could be more
> community management next year. Note that in past years (I'm not sure
> about this year), SeaMonkey has also had members manage projects in GSoC.

Yes, I have mentored two SeaMonkey-related gSoC projects in the past,
with one of it having TB impact as well (clickable message-ids).


Karsten
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[Ludovic Hirlimann]

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: Change of release and governance model for Thunderbird

Date:	Sun, 8 Jul 2012 20:41:39 +0200
From:	Patrick Ben Koetter <p...@state-of-mind.de>
To:	tb-ent...@mozilla.org

* Jeff Grossman <je...@stikman.com>:
> On 7/8/2012 9:28 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> >So, if this means that certain long standing issues – like the
> >buggy HTML editor, buggy IMAP behavior, the new Address Book,
> >maildir vs mbox for local storage, full integration of the
> >Calendar (Lightning extension), as just a few examples – will
> >finally get some much needed attention and may even actually
> >finally be permanently *fixed*, then I say that this is a very
> >*good* thing for Thunderbird.
> 
> Actually I am thinking the complete opposite.  I don't see those
> things getting any attention now unless a community member takes it
> on.  The Mozilla staff will have less time than they do today to
> spend on Thunderbird.  Those long standing issues have not gotten
> the time they need today, so I don't see them getting any time in
> the future.  The time they will have to spend on it will be fixing
> issues that stop the program from running.  Any bug fixes and/or new
> features will be up to the community to provide patches for.

I agree. Most bugs or deficits have been brought to attention a long time ago.
Why fix them when you decide not to work on it anymore. My interpretation of
the announcement is:

- We need to gather ressources to do other things.
- We will not provide ressources to improve Thunderbird.
- We will only fix Thunderbird if it is broken.
- If someone wants to work on Thunderbird feel free to do so.

p@rick

-- 
state of mind ()

http://www.state-of-mind.de

Franziskanerstraße 15      Telefon +49 89 3090 4664
81669 München              Telefax +49 89 3090 4666

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[Ben Bucksch]

On 10.07.2012 22:15, Kent James wrote:
> Mozilla in believing in the open web

> save the world from the Hegemons.

> (I just wish Mozilla controlled Facebook!).

Task: Find the contradiction in the above facts. Think about it, long.

This is why a desktop email client is critically important.

BTW: This thread belongs on tb-planning, not on tb-enterprise. Reply-To
there.

[Kent James]

On 7/10/2012 1:50 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
> This is why a desktop email client is critically important.

And why those of us who believe this need to work with each other, and
cooperatively with Mozilla, to keep Thunderbird alive and viable.

So what can we do to gel a viable community around Thunderbird?

rkent

[Axel]

I think one thing we should do is reach out to the moz.dev.ext and other Add-On writers outlets to try and get them involved. I'd say there is a considerable amount of untapped know how out there, so maybe the module ownership could be structured a little more and some teams could be formed?

For an outsider it is sometimes hard to determine who works on what, and it might help if there was some feature/module-centric (team)focus... what do you think?

I think
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird

is a really good starting, and I would like to see more names and more modules here - I would like to get involved in the Filter Piece :) . Also for those of us who cannot spare daily IRC time, it would be cool if weekly (or fortnightly) timeslots for module discussions could be organized. One could then put out calls to the community for participation if we need more manpower.

If we had small teams of people who could cluster around certain areas of expertise and we had some known leaders for these who can make the final decisions or are the go-to guys for asking before somebody attempts to patch something it also might make work more efficient. (this might already be organized this way, I do not know the process well enough at the moment, but some transparency would sure be nice).

Axel

Axel Grude
Software Developer
Thunderbird Add-ons Developer (QuickFolders, quickFilters, QuickPasswords, Zombie Keys, SmartTemplate4)
AMO Editor

---

To: "tb-planning"<tb-pl...@mozilla.org>
From: "Kent James"<ke...@caspia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 10/07/12 21:53:40 21:53 GMT Daylight Time +0100

Subject:Re: Change of release and governance model for Thunderbird

On 7/10/2012 1:50 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:

[Kent James]

On 7/10/2012 5:34 PM, Axel wrote:

I think one thing we should do is reach out to the moz.dev.ext and other Add-On writers outlets to try and get them involved.

I'd say there is a considerable amount of untapped know how out there, so maybe the module ownership could be structured a little more and some teams could be formed?

For an outsider it is sometimes hard to determine who works on what, and it might help if there was some feature/module-centric (team)focus... what do you think?

By all means, we should be reaching out at this point anywhere that we can. But we have a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. People want to be involved in things that are happening, and the recent changes at Mozilla have left the taste that Thunderbird is dying. But if we get people involved, then its happening! and more people will want to get involved.

So at this point, what Thunderbird needs are a few key people to take what might be called a leap of faith, and commit themselves to cooperate with the nascent Thunderbird community effort.

Count me in.

Axel, I was planning on approaching you privately anyway to try to get you involved with the core code, so I'm quite excited to see your expressions of interest. Of the areas that you have discussed, I'd strongly encourage you to consider the compose/editor side of things, which I think is both more neglected than filters, as well as of more interest to a broader group of users.

I think
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird

is a really good starting, and I would like to see more names and more modules here - I would like to get involved in the Filter Piece :) . Also for those of us who cannot spare daily IRC time, it would be cool if weekly (or fortnightly) timeslots for module discussions could be organized. One could then put out calls to the community for participation if we need more manpower.

If we had small teams of people who could cluster around certain areas of expertise and we had some known leaders for these who can make the final decisions or are the go-to guys for asking before somebody attempts to patch something it also might make work more efficient. (this might already be organized this way, I do not know the process well enough at the moment, but some transparency would sure be nice).

The problem here is that very few areas have enough people involved to talk about a having small team. The most common scenario is that one person is hoping to do a major project, and solicits input from people in a variety of channels. I know that I, like you, have often craved better forums for collaboration though. For now though this (tb-planning) is it unless there is enough traffic to split it at some point.

There was an initial collaborative effort along some of those lines this afternoon, sponsored by jcranmer (who I hope is also another "count me in" in this evolving process.) The results of that are here: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/tb-roadmap

That is more backend focused based on Joshua and my background, but there is forward motion at least!

rkent

[Joshua Cranmer]

On 7/10/2012 8:34 PM, Axel wrote:

For an outsider it is sometimes hard to determine who works on what, and it might help if there was some feature/module-centric (team)focus... what do you think?

As Kent mentioned, I decided to put up a tb-roadmap etherpad detailing the kinds of major projects that I think would be useful for Thunderbird, and am happy to solicit feedback from anyone else. I'm also currently preparing a proposal-via-blog-post about the missing parts of our automated testing regime.

I think
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird

is a really good starting, and I would like to see more names and more modules here - I would like to get involved in the Filter Piece :) . Also for those of us who cannot spare daily IRC time, it would be cool if weekly (or fortnightly) timeslots for module discussions could be organized. One could then put out calls to the community for participation if we need more manpower.

I have been informed that the modules page is currently in the process of being updated, but I do not know what the final result would be.

If we had small teams of people who could cluster around certain areas of expertise and we had some known leaders for these who can make the final decisions or are the go-to guys for asking before somebody attempts to patch something it also might make work more efficient. (this might already be organized this way, I do not know the process well enough at the moment, but some transparency would sure be nice).

I think we have people who are leaders for the modules and are willing to be consulted on patch approaches beforehand (I know I often discuss my major projects with important stakeholders before writing the first line of code), but the problem is that either no one knows who they are or the fora available to us are inconvenient. Part of my idea behind the etherpad was just to start putting down thoughts about high-level goals; perhaps adopting an additional mentoring approach like Firefox would be worthwhile.

Another, kind of related issue that I have as a module owner is I feel the basic tracking tools I have are rather lousy, since bugzilla just isn't cutting it. Unfortunately, I'm also at the time of night where being able to articulate anything is impossible, so I'll shut up now...

-- 
Joshua Cranmer
News submodule owner
DXR coauthor

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

On 7/11/12 5:40 AM, Joshua Cranmer wrote:

On 7/10/2012 8:34 PM, Axel wrote:

For an outsider it is sometimes hard to determine who works on what, and it might help if there was some feature/module-centric (team)focus... what do you think?

As Kent mentioned, I decided to put up a tb-roadmap etherpad detailing the kinds of major projects that I think would be useful for Thunderbird, and am happy to solicit feedback from anyone else. I'm also currently preparing a proposal-via-blog-post about the missing parts of our automated testing regime.

Can you share the etherpad ?


I believe we can build a community nowish as we are having momentum - we probably need to communicate things we decide and do a bit more widely to this mailing list - because not everyone is reading it.

Now let's see if I was currently 'just' a Thunderbird user and figured out that I need to do something to make sure that my favorite email client is going to have a viable future what would I be faced with.


I would need to find a clear and easily findable entry point - a place where I can come quickly read some text or watch a quick video, which would let me then decide how I can help. As a user I can decide where to help based on two major point and on a minor one :

1. How much time can I invest every week for the project
2. What are my technical skills
3. and the minor one is more around how much do I want to learn so I can do 'more'

I've tried but I'm not sure I succeeded when I changed the way https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing read and look.

I think starting with a roadmap is a very good idea and that will let us figure out where do we go from here. Having documents like the state of unit and automated testing is really helpful even for me to understand what's missing and where should work be allocated if anybody showed up with time to add more tests. So I think rkent's idea of building a list of bugs and saying these are the ones we would like to fix is a great idea to start a good roadmap.

We'll also need a better way to communicate - and I think we should rethink the way the weekly meetings are held. I think the format of the meetings these days is more like, the paid staff is communicating to the world in a very formal way on the progress and doings around Thunderbird. I'd like these meetings to be way more discussion based and not just here is what we've done. A Long time ago (back in 2009), we had a format of meeting that felt a lot more collaborative, where people would do a stand up and say, this week I've worked on and next week I'll be working on - to me it felt like we were more acting with and within the very small Thunderbird community.

A lot of what I wrote here is what we did with Camino back in 2003 - when AOL reaffected all the resources. We started having a irc channel different then #developers, we created a website etc etc .. What we had that we don't have right now is a strong leader that all users knew. I'm not saying we need a leader, we just need a leader's communication channel (ie what happens to the Thunderbird blog, and twitter accounts ?) that make it easier to attract people.

I think
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird

is a really good starting, and I would like to see more names and more modules here - I would like to get involved in the Filter Piece :) . Also for those of us who cannot spare daily IRC time, it would be cool if weekly (or fortnightly) timeslots for module discussions could be organized. One could then put out calls to the community for participation if we need more manpower.

I have been informed that the modules page is currently in the process of being updated, but I do not know what the final result would be.

So even when the modules page gets updated, let's see how module ownership has worked over the last few years.  But do we really want to drive Thunderbird by modules ? or is it not what you guys are proposing ?

If we had small teams of people who could cluster around certain areas of expertise and we had some known leaders for these who can make the final decisions or are the go-to guys for asking before somebody attempts to patch something it also might make work more efficient. (this might already be organized this way, I do not know the process well enough at the moment, but some transparency would sure be nice).

I think we have people who are leaders for the modules and are willing to be consulted on patch approaches beforehand (I know I often discuss my major projects with important stakeholders before writing the first line of code), but the problem is that either no one knows who they are or the fora available to us are inconvenient. Part of my idea behind the etherpad was just to start putting down thoughts about high-level goals; perhaps adopting an additional mentoring approach like Firefox would be worthwhile.

Won't that depend on time constraint  from the module owners ?

Another, kind of related issue that I have as a module owner is I feel the basic tracking tools I have are rather lousy, since bugzilla just isn't cutting it. Unfortunately, I'm also at the time of night where being able to articulate anything is impossible, so I'll shut up now...

We might also take a look at how Camino and Seamonkey have managed themselves over the few years. Kairo care to shim in ?

Smokey want to shim in too ?

-- 
@lhirlimann on twitter
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing

my photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/lhirlimann/collections/

[Wayne Mery (d531)]

On 7/11/2012 6:36 AM, Ludovic Hirlimann wrote:
> On 7/11/12 5:40 AM, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
>> On 7/10/2012 8:34 PM, Axel wrote:
>>> For an outsider it is sometimes hard to determine who works on what,
>>> and it might help if there was some feature/module-centric
>>> (team)focus... what do you think?
>>
>> As Kent mentioned, I decided to put up a tb-roadmap etherpad detailing
>> the kinds of major projects that I think would be useful for
>> Thunderbird, and am happy to solicit feedback from anyone else. I'm
>> also currently preparing a proposal-via-blog-post about the missing
>> parts of our automated testing regime.
>
> Can you share the etherpad ?

kent mentioned it earlier :)
https://etherpad.mozilla.org/tb-roadmap

> I believe we can build a community nowish as we are having momentum - we
> probably need to communicate things we decide and do a bit more widely
> to this mailing list - because not everyone is reading it.
>
> Now let's see if I was currently 'just' a Thunderbird user and figured
> out that I need to do something to make sure that my favorite email
> client is going to have a viable future what would I be faced with.
>
>
> I would need to find a clear and easily findable entry point - a place
> where I can come quickly read some text or watch a quick video, which
> would let me then decide how I can help. As a user I can decide where to
> help based on two major point and on a minor one :
>

> 1. How much time can I invest every week for the project
> 2. What are my technical skills
> 3. and the minor one is more around how much do I want to learn so I

> can do 'more'
>
> I've tried but I'm not sure I succeeded when I changed the way
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing read and look.

perhaps a "community" page? (novel idea)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/ isn't a bad start.
Unfortunately some links will sort of dead end for a thunderbird user.
For example the "get involved" link leads to a great video on
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/ but then most of the links
there move on to firefox bits

and in general pretty much everything in mozilla.org is firefox-centric,
or feeds to firefox information. Understandably so I suppose.

ref:
http://www.mozilla.org/community/index.html#community-sites
http://www.mozilla.org/community/directory.html

> I think starting with a roadmap is a very good idea and that will let us
> figure out where do we go from here. Having documents like the state of
> unit and automated testing is really helpful even for me to understand
> what's missing and where should work be allocated if anybody showed up
> with time to add more tests. So I think rkent's idea of building a list
> of bugs and saying these are the ones we would like to fix is a great
> idea to start a good roadmap.

I have some methodology to propose in a few days about "lists".

>>> If we had small teams of people who could cluster around certain
>>> areas of expertise and we had some known leaders for these who can
>>> make the final decisions or are the go-to guys for asking before
>>> somebody attempts to patch something it also might make work more
>>> efficient. (this might already be organized this way, I do not know
>>> the process well enough at the moment, but some transparency would
>>> sure be nice).

small teams could be good. "small" cuts down on communications issues
and time investment. And permits strong focus within expertise and
interest. And can spread the workload beyond module owner.

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

On 7/11/12 2:25 PM, Wayne Mery (d531) wrote:
> I have some methodology to propose in a few days about "lists".

Hum,

I'm not happy on the way we've dealt with lists. We have had at least 2,
3 or more list but we never to manage to use them. Once the list is
created it's useful for the next few months after it's creation. After
that we don't uses these lists anymore. I'de like us to be more
consistent with lists of things if we decide to use them.

Ludo

--
@lhirlimann on twitter
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing

[Patrick Cloke]

On 7/11/2012 6:36 AM, Ludovic Hirlimann wrote:

On 7/11/12 5:40 AM, Joshua Cranmer wrote:

On 7/10/2012 8:34 PM, Axel wrote:

For an outsider it is sometimes hard to determine who works on what, and it might help if there was some feature/module-centric (team)focus... what do you think?

As Kent mentioned, I decided to put up a tb-roadmap etherpad detailing the kinds of major projects that I think would be useful for Thunderbird, and am happy to solicit feedback from anyone else. I'm also currently preparing a proposal-via-blog-post about the missing parts of our automated testing regime.

Can you share the etherpad ?

Just providing the link: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/tb-roadmap

The related IRC conversation starts somewhere around http://logbot.glob.com.au/?c=mozilla%23maildev&s=10+Jul+2012&e=11+Jul+2012#c17356

--Patrick

[Tanstaafl]

On 2012-07-10 4:53 PM, Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:
> On 7/10/2012 1:50 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
>> This is why a desktop email client is critically important.
> And why those of us who believe this need to work with each other, and
> cooperatively with Mozilla, to keep Thunderbird alive and viable.
>
> So what can we do to gel a viable community around Thunderbird?

I know this has been talked about before, but maybe one thing would be
to create some kind of bug bounty system. As was noted in the prior
discussion, there are existing systems out there that could be used, so
this wouldn't have to be a massive project in and of itself. This would
provide a potentially real monetary incentive that may attract some
talented coders that otherwise may not have given Thunderbird a second look.

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

On 7/12/12 8:13 AM, Laurent Bauvens wrote:

Le 10/07/2012 21:34, Mark Banner a écrit :

On 10/07/2012 12:52, BAUVENS Laurent wrote:

It's clearly not a question of money nor a question of lack of hired resources

Correct.

so perhaps it just could be a political question inside Mozilla where Thunderbird haters struggle against Thunderbird lovers. I won't be surprised of that.

As a Mozilla "insider" I can assure you that it isn't this either.

Mitchell has already answered the issue in her blog post - continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts. There's then more background for this reason at the bottom of her post.

Also, remember that Mozilla does recognise the importance of Thunderbird to its users and the communities, which is why it is still providing significant support to maintaining and being able to release new Thunderbird versions in the future.

I well understand that Mozilla recognizes Thunderbird as an important piece of software for its users but in the same time Mozilla recognizes that Thunderbird is not an important piece of software in its strategic policy and then doesn't deserve anyway the resources spent on it. This is a point of view.

"Stability and community driven innovation" In my opinion, it's a nice sentence for a tombstone. A software at the top of its form needs strong ambitions to permit  it to evolve. I think strong ambitions are still possible with email, even with a desktop client. But strong ambitions need strong engineering to be transform in disruptive functionalities. All the contrary of "Stability and community driven innovations".

That's why I think Mozilla will have to give Thunderbird to another free organization really motivated to develop email clients and servers and be involved in rfc evolution process.

Laurent as a good point here. Email will evolve, and we should be trying to follow and get involved with the various IETF working groups.

Ludo
ps laurent the main conversation is on tb-planning , so replying there.

[Archaeopteryx]

> On 7/10/2012 1:50 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
> So what can we do to gel a viable community around Thunderbird?
>
> rkent

Hi,

there has been much discussion and it's difficult to choose where to
post my response to all this.

Getting new contributors, not only now, is key, else the project is dead
as always some people will leave for various reasons. So Thunderbird
needs a central, easy to find 'Get Involved' page which ideally is also
linked in signatures of existing contributors in the usual communication
channels (newsgroups, forums).

To help existing and new contributors, these points are in my humble
opinion necessary:
1. (Faster) support by Mozilla for getting Gecko core
changes/enhancements into trunk, e.g. the auto-height feature for
iframes: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80713
2. Sometimes people land something which is very pre-alpha and breaks
some things, but no tests, and postpone fixing this until short before
release (or don't fix it because they are too busy). So someone has to
care about keeping the tree in good shape that people can start to hack.
3. Getting feedback/input before hacking on an issue must be fast. It's
very disappointing to get rejected or now responses.
4. If something can be used in more than Firefox, it should be written
as a modulo so it can be easily integrated in Thunderbird and doesn't
bind too much developers porting it to Thunderbird.
5. Provide documentation: While user-created documented has usually the
best quality, an easily browsable, complete documentation is a big
support for development: The only Doxygen generated comm-central
documentation I know of is 2.5 years old: http://doxygen.db48x.net/

Furthermore, it would helpful to know when contracts for currently
paid-only features like new mail addresses and attachment services end
so free implementations like (S)FTP can land.

Archaeopteryx

[Blake Winton]

On 17-07-12 6:09 , Archaeopteryx wrote:
>> On 7/10/2012 1:50 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
>> So what can we do to gel a viable community around Thunderbird?
>>
>> rkent

> Getting new contributors, not only now, is key, else the project is
> dead as always some people will leave for various reasons. So
> Thunderbird needs a central, easy to find 'Get Involved' page which
> ideally is also linked in signatures of existing contributors in the
> usual communication channels (newsgroups, forums).
>
> To help existing and new contributors, these points are in my humble
> opinion necessary:

So, while the things you listed would be good to help existing
contributors, they don't really address how we would get new
contributors… Do you (actually, do any of you) have any ideas on where
we can find people who might want to contribute to Thunderbird?

> Furthermore, it would helpful to know when contracts for currently
> paid-only features like new mail addresses and attachment services end
> so free implementations like (S)FTP can land.

For the SFTP case, I think I can say that we'll be happy to land it just
as soon as someone writes the code. To the best of my knowledge, that
one in particular is totally not dependent on any contracts we may or
may not have signed. (Also, I suspect we'ld happily take a patch for
WebDAV which I think is what Microsoft's SharePoint stuff uses.)

Later,
Blake.

--
Blake Winton Thunderbird User Experience Lead
bwi...@mozilla.com

[Axel]

On 17-07-12 6:09 , Archaeopteryx wrote:

On 7/10/2012 1:50 PM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
So what can we do to gel a viable community around Thunderbird?

rkent

Getting new contributors, not only now, is key, else the project is dead as always some people will leave for various reasons. So Thunderbird needs a central, easy to find 'Get Involved' page which ideally is also linked in signatures of existing contributors in the usual communication channels (newsgroups, forums).

To help existing and new contributors, these points are in my humble opinion necessary:

So, while the things you listed would be good to help existing contributors, they don't really address how we would get new contributors� Do you (actually, do any of you) have any ideas on where we can find people who might want to contribute to Thunderbird?

Immediately two things come to my mind:

• AMO-Editors (you could post an invite or other blurb to amo-editor...@mozilla.org)
  
  
• Thunderbird Add-On Authors (maybe invite Thunderbird specialists on mozilla.dev.extensions)

Apart from IRC that's probably the most likely pool of people who would be knowledgeable enough and willing to contribute.

cheers,
� Axel

[Joshua Cranmer]

On 7/17/2012 9:27 AM, Blake Winton wrote:
> On 17-07-12 6:09 , Archaeopteryx wrote:
>> Furthermore, it would helpful to know when contracts for currently
>> paid-only features like new mail addresses and attachment services
>> end so free implementations like (S)FTP can land.
> For the SFTP case, I think I can say that we'll be happy to land it
> just as soon as someone writes the code. To the best of my knowledge,
> that one in particular is totally not dependent on any contracts we
> may or may not have signed. (Also, I suspect we'ld happily take a
> patch for WebDAV which I think is what Microsoft's SharePoint stuff
> uses.)

The sticking point for the SFTP case (AIUI) was the fact that there are
no license-compatible libraries for SFTP that we could pull into
Thunderbird. Combined with the fact that SSH falls into the category of
"security-sensitive stuff, reimplement at your own risk," this makes a
usable SFTP backend very difficult to obtain.

--
Joshua Cranmer
News submodule owner
DXR coauthor

[Mike Conley]

>> The sticking point for the SFTP case (AIUI) was the fact that there are
>> no license-compatible libraries for SFTP that we could pull into
>> Thunderbird. Combined with the fact that SSH falls into the category of
>> "security-sensitive stuff, reimplement at your own risk," this makes a
>> usable SFTP backend very difficult to obtain.

I think the conclusion we came to in IRC a few months back was that we'd
probably want to use something like libssh via js-ctypes, and then
package SFTP support as an add-on (since libssh is GPL'd).

Sounds like a fun project, if anyone has the cycles. :)

On 17/07/2012 9:48 AM, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
> On 7/17/2012 9:27 AM, Blake Winton wrote:
>> On 17-07-12 6:09 , Archaeopteryx wrote:
>>> Furthermore, it would helpful to know when contracts for currently
>>> paid-only features like new mail addresses and attachment services
>>> end so free implementations like (S)FTP can land.
>> For the SFTP case, I think I can say that we'll be happy to land it
>> just as soon as someone writes the code. To the best of my knowledge,
>> that one in particular is totally not dependent on any contracts we
>> may or may not have signed. (Also, I suspect we'ld happily take a
>> patch for WebDAV which I think is what Microsoft's SharePoint stuff
>> uses.)
>
> The sticking point for the SFTP case (AIUI) was the fact that there are
> no license-compatible libraries for SFTP that we could pull into
> Thunderbird. Combined with the fact that SSH falls into the category of
> "security-sensitive stuff, reimplement at your own risk," this makes a
> usable SFTP backend very difficult to obtain.
>

[Kent James]

On 7/17/2012 7:05 AM, Mike Conley wrote:
> I think the conclusion we came to in IRC a few months back was that
> we'd probably want to use something like libssh via js-ctypes, and
> then package SFTP support as an add-on (since libssh is GPL'd).
>
> Sounds like a fun project, if anyone has the cycles. :)

Does anyone know if there would be restrictions to shipping an addon
containing GPL code with the product itself? Perhaps a corollary
question is, why can extensions be GPL code and not core code?

rkent

[Gervase Markham]

On 17/07/12 17:00, Kent James wrote:
> Does anyone know if there would be restrictions to shipping an addon
> containing GPL code with the product itself?

Yes; it would mean distributing the whole of Thunderbird under the GPL,
and Mozilla is not going to do that.

> Perhaps a corollary
> question is, why can extensions be GPL code and not core code?

The GPL requirements only kick in when you distribute code. Running a
program is not restricted. If you combine GPLed code with other code and
distribute the result, you have to distribute the combination under the
GPL. If that's not possible, you are prevented from distributing the
combination at all.

So distributing a GPL-ed extension - fine. Distributing Thunderbird -
fine. Distributing the two as a package would mean distributing standard
Thunderbird packages under the GPL. That could legally be done by
someone (the licensing is compatible), but Mozilla is not going to do it.

Gerv