Thunderbird Product Notes v0.6

[Dan Mosedale]

A current version of this document can be found at <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Product_Notes>.  Feel free to comment in this tb-planning thread or on the wiki comment page.

Thunderbird Product Notes v0.6

As mentioned in previous discussions, a number of us believe that our vision for Thunderbird is likely to evolve significantly over the coming months as we iterate on add-ons and grow to understand our options in the market better. As such, none of this is set in stone. Version 0.6 is intended to be a baseline and a starting point for discussion that tries to codify what we already believe, and leaves offering a stronger vision to future iterations.

Goals For This Document

1. Make it easier for everyone in the community to see where the Thunderbird product is going, how to align themselves with it, and thereby encounter fewer directional surprises over time.

2. Act as a reference/short-cut for decision-makers, lessening the need to constantly reason and discuss from first principles.

Values (taken from the Mozilla Manifesto)

• The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.

• Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.

• The effectiveness of the Internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.

• Commercial involvement in the development of the Internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial goals and public benefit is critical.

Goal

• Maximize our impact in shaping the future of messaging on the Internet.

Market

• Thunderbird will focus on the individual user and Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) market segments.

Product

• The Thunderbird user-experience seeks to help users accomplish the important tasks suggested by conversations and messages (such as scheduling a meal or updating a to-do list) rather than simply displaying lists of these things.

• Thunderbird will favor elegance over completeness.

• Thunderbird will focus on conversations that occur over mainstream and emerging communication channels. These include email, web forums, social networks, and microblogging services.

• Personal preferences and niche functionality will be accommodated by enabling an ecosystem of optional add-ons, rather than overloading the main UI with a large set of preferences.

• We intend to explore a variety of models for publicizing and supporting add-ons depending on their purpose.

• We intend to evolve and structure Thunderbird so that both the core project itself as well as developers working in the ecosystem around Thunderbird can be financially self-sustaining.

• Helping people own, control, and protect their own conversations, messages, and data is a critically important feature of Thunderbird.

Platform

• Offering developers a platform to integrate their messages and conversations with the user experiences and data that matter to them (particularly, but not solely, on the web) will continue to be critically important to Thunderbird.

• Traditional Gecko add-on mechanisms (eg XPCOM-based ones) will continue to be supported, but focus will gradually shift to Jetpack-based mechanisms over time.

Participation

• Mozilla strives to build and strengthen a healthy community of participation around Thunderbird, based on mutual respect, positive contribution, and recognition of differences in experience and interests.

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Participation describes our participation model in more detail.

[Alan Lord (Gmail)]

On 14/07/10 20:46, Dan Mosedale wrote:
> A current version of this document can be found at
> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Product_Notes>. Feel free to
> comment in this tb-planning thread or on the wiki comment page.

Thanks for these posts, interesting stuff.

One question if I may, or please tell me to go elsewhere, but why is the
Market focus just SOHO? What's up with going after the larger business
sector? I'd love to see TB able to fit into more of a corporate
environment and provide a decent, cross-platform, alternative to Outlook ...

Cheers

Al
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[Dan Mosedale]

"On 7/14/10 1:40 PM, Alan Lord (Gmail) wrote:

On 14/07/10 20:46, Dan Mosedale wrote:

   A current version of this document can be found at
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Product_Notes>. Feel free to
comment in this tb-planning thread or on the wiki comment page.

Thanks for these posts, interesting stuff.

You're welcome!

One question if I may, or please tell me to go elsewhere, but why is the Market focus just SOHO?

From a strategic point of view, the biggest conflict is in values alignment:

"Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet."

Enterprise deployers generally value minimizing support burden significantly more highly than (for example) allowing users to customize their installation.  Additionally, enterprises value many features in ways (eg calendaring) that are fundamentally very different than the ways that end users tend to value them.

More operationally, a big motivation behind this statement is simply an intent to focus.  Mozilla as an organization doesn't have significant experience in working with the Enterprise sector, and Thunderbird as a project has far too few active developers to do a good job with both individual and enterprise features.

What's up with going after the larger business sector? I'd love to see TB able to fit into more of a corporate environment and provide a decent, cross-platform, alternative to Outlook ...

While we don't feel we are in a position to include the enterprise in the scope of the core product, there are people and organizations in the Thunderbird community who are interested in this market, some of whom are participating in the add-on ecosystem and some in maintaining older branches of Thudnerbird for enterprise customers.

Some of them are small businesspeople, and others work for larger players in the enterprise space (such as Red Hat).  The tb-enterprise mailing list is a good place to get in contact with that group of people.

Dan

[Ben Bucksch]

On 15.07.2010 00:42, Dan Mosedale wrote:
>
>> One question if I may, or please tell me to go elsewhere, but why is
>> the Market focus just SOHO?
> From a strategic point of view, the biggest conflict is in values
> alignment:
>
> "Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on
> the Internet."
>
> Enterprise deployers generally value minimizing support burden
> significantly more highly than (for example) allowing users to
> customize their installation. Additionally, enterprises value many
> features in ways (eg calendaring) that are fundamentally very
> different than the ways that end users tend to value them.
>
> More operationally, a big motivation behind this statement is simply
> an intent to focus. Mozilla as an organization doesn't have
> significant experience in working with the Enterprise sector, and
> Thunderbird as a project has far too few active developers to do a
> good job with both individual and enterprise features.

I agree. Do not spend a lot of effort on it, but take as much of the
market as you easily can - easy both in resources and values.

Can we clarify "focus" to mean that, e.g. "We nevertheless appreciate
patches that make Thunderbird more enterprise-friendly, if they are not
in conflict with our values", and avoid being interpreted as "we don't
want enterprise-aimed features"?

[Alan Lord (Gmail)]

On 14/07/10 23:42, Dan Mosedale wrote:
<snip />

> Some of them are small businesspeople, and others work for larger
> players in the enterprise space (such as Red Hat). The tb-enterprise
> mailing list is a good place to get in contact with that group of people.

Thanks for the considered answer Dan, it's appreciated. I'll check out
the tb-enterprise list although I *do* wish it was on the News server
and not just mail based...</sigh>

[neandr]

 [15.07.2010 00:42]    »Dan Mosedale« wrote:

From a strategic point of view, the biggest conflict is in values alignment:

"Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet."

Enterprise deployers generally value minimizing support burden significantly more highly than (for example) allowing users to customize their installation.  Additionally, enterprises value many features in ways (eg calendaring) that are fundamentally very different than the ways that end users tend to value them.

More operationally, a big motivation behind this statement is simply an intent to focus.  Mozilla as an organization doesn't have significant experience in working with the Enterprise sector, and Thunderbird as a project has far too few active developers to do a good job with both individual and enterprise features.

With all respect for the people working at Mozilla/Thunderbird and fully understand the limitation they are faced with, I would like to see a more detailed mission statement for the products (TB/LG) and the future of it. Only expressing TB is for individual users, SOHO and not for the Enterprise is a very vague  statement. Are there definitions for those use cases? If they exists follows Mozilla/TB/LG  them?
Beside a mission statement how about a road map? Also the projects are very much living on engagement of contributors and their very personnel requirements, likings etc  such a plan/road map/(what ever you name it) would make clearer where TB/LG stands and the force go into -- or should go into.

With David  coming on board we have seen some plans, very enthusiastic  eg. about the integration of LG with TB.

Did I missed the updates to all of that?

Günter

[Dan Mosedale]

On 7/15/10 2:34 AM, Ben Bucksch wrote:
> I agree. Do not spend a lot of effort on it, but take as much of the
> market as you easily can - easy both in resources and values.
>
> Can we clarify "focus" to mean that, e.g. "We nevertheless appreciate
> patches that make Thunderbird more enterprise-friendly, if they are
> not in conflict with our values", and avoid being interpreted as "we
> don't want enterprise-aimed features"?

I see your point that there is indeed room for misinterpretation here.

One of the things I'm trying to be careful about here is that I'm not
sure whether a feature is useful to the enterprise says much one way or
the other about whether we'd accept it.

In particular, I think whether we accept _any_ patch or feature into the
core is not just about avoidance of values conflict, but rather a
complex calculus that includes that as well as a whole bunch of other
variables, including "what's the cost/benefit to existing users",
"what's the cost/benefit to people outside of the SOHO/individual
market", "what's the cost of maintaining it", "who is going to maintain
it", "is it likely to add complexity to other feature work we
anticipate", etc. This is all covered by the last point in the
Decisions section of <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Participation>.

I'm concerned that it's difficult to explicitly call out enterprise as
proposed in the product document without implicitly committing to
spending more time evaluating and reviewing such changes than other
parts of the product.

On a somewhat related note, I'm already feeling like these documents are
big enough that they're likely to discourage people from reading them,
so I'm relatively disinclined to add more verbiage except in cases where
it provides very significant value.

Dan

[David Bienvenu]

On 7/15/2010 11:58 AM, Dan Mosedale wrote:
>
> In particular, I think whether we accept _any_ patch or feature into the core is not just about avoidance of values conflict, but rather a complex calculus that includes
> that as well as a whole bunch of other variables, including "what's the cost/benefit to existing users", "what's the cost/benefit to people outside of the SOHO/individual
> market", "what's the cost of maintaining it", "who is going to maintain it", "is it likely to add complexity to other feature work we anticipate", etc. This is all
> covered by the last point in the Decisions section of <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Participation>.

FWIW, I think the above paragraph is much more explicit and hence more useful than the last point in the Decisions section...

- David

[Dan Mosedale]

On 7/15/10 11:23 AM, neandr wrote:

 [15.07.2010 00:42]    »Dan Mosedale« wrote:

From a strategic point of view, the biggest conflict is in values alignment:

"Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet."

Enterprise deployers generally value minimizing support burden significantly more highly than (for example) allowing users to customize their installation.  Additionally, enterprises value many features in ways (eg calendaring) that are fundamentally very different than the ways that end users tend to value them.

More operationally, a big motivation behind this statement is simply an intent to focus.  Mozilla as an organization doesn't have significant experience in working with the Enterprise sector, and Thunderbird as a project has far too few active developers to do a good job with both individual and enterprise features.

With all respect for the people working at Mozilla/Thunderbird and fully understand the limitation they are faced with, I would like to see a more detailed mission statement for the products (TB/LG) and the future of it. Only expressing TB is for individual users, SOHO and not for the Enterprise is a very vague  statement.

This is, indeed, a first step.  As mentioned in the intro paragraph of that page, we're still evolving a stronger vision, and that's not likely to make it into a draft of this document just yet.

Are there definitions for those use cases?

No.  This is unlikely to happen before the stronger vision is further along.

If they exists follows Mozilla/TB/LG  them?
Beside a mission statement how about a road map? Also the projects are very much living on engagement of contributors and their very personnel requirements, likings etc  such a plan/road map/(what ever you name it) would make clearer where TB/LG stands and the force go into -- or should go into.

A todo on my list (as listed on <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Arch_of_Participation_todos>) is to put together a product priorities page which ties some of these things together.  I suspect this will help address the concerns you mention.

With David  coming on board we have seen some plans, very enthusiastic  eg. about the integration of LG with TB.

Did I missed the updates to all of that?

Yes, see <http://ascher.ca/blog/2009/02/18/lightning_update/> for the details.  That page specifically talks about Thunderbird 3, but the keep-it-as-an-addon plan is still current.  Note that as part of Thunderbird 3.1, the start page advertises Lightning to end-users.

Dan

[neandr]

:-)    I expected this would lead to a misunderstanding, sorry not to modify my answer before sending.
Yes, I known a change for TB/LG took place. Alternatively I could have taken one of my favorites: TB/AB or the use of "Categories" across TB/LG.
The question was more general about David's / the team's plans, the plans for TB beyond 3.1, the TBnext. :-D

[Kent James]

On 7/15/2010 11:23 AM, neandr wrote:
> With all respect for the people working at Mozilla/Thunderbird and
> fully understand the limitation they are faced with, I would like to
> see a more detailed mission statement for the products (TB/LG) and the
> future of it. Only expressing TB is for individual users, SOHO and not
> for the Enterprise is a very vague statement.

I tried to reply to this here, but my responses got wordy so I did this
blog post instead:
http://mesquilla.com/2010/07/15/thunderbirds-strategic-dilemma/

rkent

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

Current plan is to explore plenty of things through extensions. I know dmose is thinking about publishing a list of those extensions that we'll be working on. I think that's what he meant by :

A todo on my list (as listed on <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Arch_of_Participation_todos>) is to put together a product priorities page which ties some of these things together.  I suspect this will help address the concerns you mention.

Ludo

-- 
Ludovic Hirlimann MozillaMessaging QA lead  
http://flic.kr/photos/lhirlimann
http://www.spreadthunderbird.com/aff/79/2

[Bryan Clark]

On 16/07/10 3:04 AM, Ludovic Hirlimann wrote:

Current plan is to explore plenty of things through extensions. I know dmose is thinking about publishing a list of those extensions that we'll be working on.

I'm sending out mail right now (to this list) with a list of extensions that are being worked on or planned.  The list will not be exhaustive or definitive but would at least give people ideas of what is coming and perhaps would allow interested parties to come together.

Cheers,
~ Bryan

[Dan Mosedale]

On 7/15/10 12:06 PM, David Bienvenu wrote:
> On 7/15/2010 11:58 AM, Dan Mosedale wrote:
>>
>> In particular, I think whether we accept _any_ patch or feature into
>> the core is not just about avoidance of values conflict, but rather a
>> complex calculus that includes that as well as a whole bunch of other
>> variables, including "what's the cost/benefit to existing users",
>> "what's the cost/benefit to people outside of the SOHO/individual
>> market", "what's the cost of maintaining it", "who is going to
>> maintain it", "is it likely to add complexity to other feature work
>> we anticipate", etc. This is all covered by the last point in the
>> Decisions section of
>> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Tb_Participation>.
> FWIW, I think the above paragraph is much more explicit and hence more
> useful than the last point in the Decisions section...

That's very helpful feedback; thanks! I'll try and incorporate the
above thing somehow.

Dan

[Dan Mosedale]

> Current plan is to explore plenty of things through extensions. I know
> dmose is thinking about publishing a list of those extensions that
> we'll be working on. I think that's what he meant by :
>
>> A todo on my list (as listed on
>> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Dmose/Arch_of_Participation_todos>) is
>> to put together a product priorities page which ties some of these
>> things together. I suspect this will help address the concerns you
>> mention.

That's exactly right. Bryan and DavidB have posted a whole bunch of the
relevant content today to this very mailing list (thanks, guys!).

I'll be out at OSCON next week, so I won't be getting a lot done then,
but I hope to work with a variety of folks after I get back and in the
first part of August to make our overall thinking here easier to find
and understand.

Dan

[Dan Mosedale]

On 7/15/10 6:00 PM, Kent James wrote:
> On 7/15/2010 11:23 AM, neandr wrote:
>> With all respect for the people working at Mozilla/Thunderbird and
>> fully understand the limitation they are faced with, I would like to
>> see a more detailed mission statement for the products (TB/LG) and
>> the future of it. Only expressing TB is for individual users, SOHO
>> and not for the Enterprise is a very vague statement.
>
> I tried to reply to this here, but my responses got wordy so I did
> this blog post instead:
> http://mesquilla.com/2010/07/15/thunderbirds-strategic-dilemma/

Thanks for writing this down. Not too surprisingly, there are a number
of things I think about differently, but in particular, I think you've
done a good job teasing out a bunch of the constraints in play here, a
number of which are not at all obvious. (But that I'm hoping we as a
group continue to get better about communicating explicitly).

Dan