Summit Part 1: Governance

[Kent James]

We had a great Thunderbird Summit in Toronto, thanks to all those who
came! We made a number of important decisions as a group, as well as got
in some good hacking. I'll report some of those results in individual
posts in case there is any discussion here of the individual issues.

Governance

We agreed that Thunderbird will have a group called the "Thunderbird
Council" that will be responsible for leading the Thunderbird project,
and have responsibility and authority over all aspects of Thunderbird,
subject to any limitations that may be specified by Mozilla as owners of
the trademark.

The Thunderbird Council will be elected by a larger group that consists
of significant contributors to Thunderbird. We agreed that this larger
group consists initially of the people who were invited to or attended
the Thunderbird Summit. We would consider votes taken at the Summit
(including from video participants) to be valid. There was considerable
debate over the name of this larger group, and how to choose who belongs
in this group in the future. Although we agreed to the name "Thunderbird
Core Team" in a vote, there was enough controversy that this could
change when we formalize a charter for Thunderbird governance.

The Thunderbird Core Team nominated and elected 7 individuals to the
Thunderbird Council, with an initial term of 1 year. The Thunderbird
Council consists of:

Mike Conley
Joshua Cranmer
Kent James
Philipp Kewisch
Magnus Melin
Wayne Mery
Florian Quèze

The Thunderbird Council got together, and agreed that Kent James would
server as initial Chairperson, with an initial term of 3 months.

Now we need to write a Thunderbird charter that describes this
governance, and specifies more detail. But we have a defined group that
can make decisions, so we should be able to move forward.

:rkent

_______________________________________________
tb-planning mailing list
tb-pl...@mozilla.org
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning

[Gervase Markham]

Hi all,

I'm very excited to hear about these changes, which I'm sure will be
good for the project.

On 21/10/14 03:57, Kent James wrote:
> The Thunderbird Core Team nominated and elected 7 individuals to the
> Thunderbird Council, with an initial term of 1 year. The Thunderbird
> Council consists of:
>
> Mike Conley
> Joshua Cranmer
> Kent James
> Philipp Kewisch
> Magnus Melin
> Wayne Mery
> Florian Quèze
>
> The Thunderbird Council got together, and agreed that Kent James would
> server as initial Chairperson, with an initial term of 3 months.

These terms and timelines seem rather short to me. While democratic
accountability is important, continuity and the ability to get stuff
done without having to administer elections all the time is also important.

I would encourage the Council and the core team to consider perhaps a
3-year term for Council membership with 2, 2 and 3 positions coming up
for re-election in each of the 3 years (with the initial terms of the
initial members chosen randomly). This sort of scheme seems to have
worked well elsewhere, with a good mix of change and continuity.

Whatever you decide, I look forward to the bright future :-)

Gerv

[Patrick Cloke]

Gerv,

Kent did not include it in this email, but the gist of the plan (to my understanding) was to have this initial set of people serve 1 year terms and then to define longer terms and guidelines in some sort of charter. I think we discussed 2 year terms at the Summit with ~half the Council up for election each year, but 3 year terms is reasonable as well!

Thanks for your input,
Patrick

[Kent James]

On 10/21/2014 5:28 AM, Patrick Cloke wrote:
> Kent did not include it in this email, but the gist of the plan (to my
> understanding) was to have this initial set of people serve 1 year
> terms and then to define longer terms and guidelines in some sort of
> charter. I think we discussed 2 year terms at the Summit with ~half
> the Council up for election each year, but 3 year terms is reasonable
> as well!

Patrick is correct. Time was limited, and we needed to accomplish the
essential business of simply having any governance in place first, with
details to flesh out in a charter. Longer terms are clearly part of the
plan. It will be easier to get people to agree to longer terms once we
have a better idea of the work involved.

Although there may be cases where the selection of the Thunderbird
Council ends up being contentious over some aspect of project direction,
the more normal problem is just motivating people to serve on the
Council, along with encouraging emerging leadership. So we need both
some regular turnover so that emerging leaders can be added, but also
terms that are short enough that people are willing to commit. 2 year
terms, with perhaps a limit of 4 consecutive years, I believe is about
right.

On the term of the Council Chair, that is ultimately a decision of the
Thunderbird Council. We set an initial term of 3 months simply to give
us time to discuss the role of the Chair, not with any expectation that
the Chair would rotate every 3 months. We did agree that the person who
is the Chair needs to be able to use that title publicly within Mozilla
as the person who can speak for the project, but we did not want to see
the Chair promoted publicly as the personality behind Thunderbird.

:rkent

[Axel Grude]

All,

I think this is a great start. Would agree with 3 months seeming short, but since this is all new I am sure it stabilize at a bigger period.

Unfortunately I couldn't follow the live event because Vidyo just doesn't play well with my Windows 7 setup here but if you guys need another person to speak on behalf of the Addons developers (ok you got at least 2 very strong people on the team already) I am available! I am still 100% committed to making Thunderbird the best mail client out there (especially since I am having to suffer to daily outlook crashes at my bread job). I must say that the factors stability and persistance are actually becoming bigger "selling points" the longer I am forced to work in a corporate environment. Microsoft probably doesn't have enough good developers to maintain a proper product for the desktop (*), so as long as there is a desktop I see a future for Thunderbird.

Also, I would like to see a "monetization" team that help both funding Thunderbird and helping productivity Addon developers to self fund (not necessarily with money, but a proper market-place experience or subscription channels would be great) to make this a better product. We have seen some feedback on people being opposed to monetization in form of landing pages / asking for donations. IMO these users should have an option for a yearly "silent" subscription, e.g. 10$/year. i think a free (as in beer) product should have some way of asking for direct means to fund itself (NO THIRD PARTY ADVERTISEMENTS!!!). It has to be clear that Thunderbird is independent and as such must fund itself independently.

(*) all their recent efforts point towards thin client / moving programming logic to the cloud

regards
  Axel
 

--

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

To: Gervase Markham - ge...@mozilla.org
From: Patrick Cloke <clo...@gmail.com>
CC: tb-pl...@mozilla.org <tb-pl...@mozilla.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 21/10/2014 13:28:59 13:28 GMT ST +0100 [Week 43]
Subject: Re: Summit Part 1: Governance

---

[Kent James]

On 10/21/2014 5:44 AM, Axel Grude wrote:

Also, I would like to see a "monetization" team that help both funding Thunderbird and helping productivity Addon developers to self fund (not necessarily with money, but a proper market-place experience or subscription channels would be great) to make this a better product. We have seen some feedback on people being opposed to monetization in form of landing pages / asking for donations. IMO these users should have an option for a yearly "silent" subscription, e.g. 10$/year. i think a free (as in beer) product should have some way of asking for direct means to fund itself (NO THIRD PARTY ADVERTISEMENTS!!!). It has to be clear that Thunderbird is independent and as such must fund itself independently.

There were also substantial discussions of monetization issues at the Summit which I will post about later. TL;DR version is that we will be trying to raise income for the project through asking for donations.

We also had a session on "Thunderbird Pro", which would be a version of Thunderbird with additional, pay-only features (such as Exchange support, or support, or other addons) and would be distributed for a fee. The impression I got from that though is not significantly different from the previous gathering that you attended. Namely, there is not enough interest by other core contributors in this for it to be viable at the moment. They don't oppose the concept, but they cannot see themselves able to spare 10-20 hours per week to work on it, given that they have existing full-time jobs. For myself, the status quo is working out, since ExQuilla can provide me sufficient income.

The real answer here is for Marketplace to be ported to work with desktop apps, including Firefox and Thunderbird. But TheOne does not believe that is likely to happen.

:rkent

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Kent James wrote:
> We agreed that Thunderbird will have a group called the "Thunderbird
> Council" that will be responsible for leading the Thunderbird project,
> and have responsibility and authority over all aspects of Thunderbird,
> subject to any limitations that may be specified by Mozilla as owners of
> the trademark.
…

> The Thunderbird Council consists of:
>
> Mike Conley
> Joshua Cranmer
> Kent James
> Philipp Kewisch
> Magnus Melin
> Wayne Mery
> Florian Quèze

Congratulations everyone. :-)
You've picked a good crew to steer through the heavy seas ahead,
I daresay.


Karsten