Softmaker Office

[Dave Koelmeyer]

Hi All,

I've never heard of these folks before, but spied this:

• http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofwtb_en.htm

"SoftMaker wants to be part of the Thunderbird development community. To this end, we are assigning an experienced developer to work full-time on the Thunderbird code and add valuable enhancements."

No idea if there's any merit to this statement or how much will make it back into the open, but FWIW.

Cheers,
Dave

-- 
Dave Koelmeyer
http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

On 03/17/2015 07:10 AM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:

Hi All,

I've never heard of these folks before, but spied this:

• http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofwtb_en.htm

"SoftMaker wants to be part of the Thunderbird development community. To this end, we are assigning an experienced developer to work full-time on the Thunderbird code and add valuable enhancements."

No idea if there's any merit to this statement or how much will make it back into the open, but FWIW.

How about we engage them and see what their plan is and who is teh developer.

-- 
:Usul in #moc on irc.mozilla.org
Mozilla Operation Center
<3 ipv6 , <3 Gaming , <3 OSS
http://sietch-tabr.tumblr.com

[Jörg Knobloch]

On 17/03/2015 07:10, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> No idea if there's any merit to this statement or how much will make
> it back into the open, but FWIW.

No harm in asking, or is there? I e-mailed them this:

===

Hi,

I've just read this on your website:
===
Will SoftMaker be involved with the Thunderbird project?

Yes. Thunderbird is a great collaborative effort, and SoftMaker wants to

be part of the Thunderbird development community. To this end, we are
assigning an experienced developer to work full-time on the Thunderbird
code and add valuable enhancements.

SoftMaker's goal is to build Thunderbird into the best-performing
competition to Microsoft Outlook. In doing so, SoftMaker puts a high
premium on good cooperation with the volunteer team working on Thunderbird.
===

Perhaps your developer can introduce himself/herself to the Thunderbird
team at one of the bi-weekly meetings or via the planning mailing list.
Details:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/StatusMeetings
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning

Kind regards,
Jorg K.

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

[Tanstaafl]

On 3/17/2015 2:10 AM, Dave Koelmeyer

<dave.ko...@davekoelmeyer.co.nz> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I've never heard of these folks before, but spied this:
>

> * http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofwtb_en.htm
>
> /"//SoftMaker wants to be part of the Thunderbird development community.

> To this end, we are assigning an experienced developer to work full-time

> on the Thunderbird code and add valuable enhancements."/

>
> No idea if there's any merit to this statement or how much will make it
> back into the open, but FWIW.

I've known about them for a long time, but first time seeing this...

It will be great if true... can anyone from Mozilla confirm this?

[R Kent James]

I've been discussing this with Martin of Softmaker for about a year, but
he did not want any information leaked earlier because it had a large
impact on his customers and existing business relationships. He
originally approached me because he was interested in including ExQuilla
with his office suite, but as we talked it became clear that his plans
were more important to Thunderbird than to ExQuilla, so I have been
primarily representing Thunderbird in discussions with him.

Parts of the Thunderbird UI were not to their liking, and partly at my
encouragement they will use an add-on to customize the user interface to
be more compatible with their office suite. That allows them to get what
they want, while ultimately being able to contribute positively to the
core program rather than a fork.

A developer has been working on the add-on for them for a number of
months, and has web/javascript skills typical of an addon author.
Softmaker says that once the developer is finished with their addon, he
will be available to the Thunderbird community for core projects. Based
on that background, I've encouraged them to consider taking on the
project of CardDav integration as an initial effort, as that is one of
the issues that was mentioned repeatedly as a shortcoming in responses
to my recent "Thunderbird is alive" blog post.

The developer has not yet been able to engage with the Thunderbird
community. Until that happens, and it is clear that this is likely to be
a long-lasting contribution, I don't want to make too much of the
promise of a full-time developer to Thunderbird. Yet the commitment of
Softmaker to use Thunderbird with their office suite does appear to be
real. As part of our current marketing message of growing momentum for
Thunderbird, that is the news that we should be promoting.

The future of Thunderbird relies on a mix of resources from a variety of
sources, including not only volunteers, but also donations, and
contributions from third parties such as SoftMaker. Other organizations
have also made significant contributions to Thunderbird over the years,
including Linagora and Mozilla Japan. It is important that we make their
interaction with the Thunderbird community to be a positive experience.
I'd like to see us give these organizations some positive exposure to
thank them for their contributions, but at the same time we don't want
to give them negative publicity if priorities change and they have to
change their commitment. So for that reason I would like to welcome
Softmaker to the Thunderbird community as a major use and promoter of
our product. I hope the developer works out, but I don't want to
denigrate Softmaker in any way if it does not.

I've been trying to get Mozilla management to talk to me about some of
these issues, so far without success. We need to discuss:

1) Access to information about existing Thunderbird business relationships,
2) Where and how we can collect and spend donations, and
3) How can we negotiate future business relationships, such as this
SoftMaker arrangement.

I'll be in the Bay Area this weekend, and I'm trying (so far without
success) to get an appointment with Mitchell on Friday. If anyone
reading this has any access to Mozilla management, I would really
appreciate you forwarding your concern to Mitchell about how important
it is that she meet with representatives of the Thunderbird Council to
discuss our relationship with Mozilla.

R Kent James

[Martin Kotulla (SoftMaker)]

Group,

I planned to post here yesterday, but we were too busy yesterday pushing
out the press release, answering questions from the press, sending out
the information to our customer base... and then drowning in replies
from customers congratulating us on our decision to participate in the
Thunderbird project. :-)

Here is the story:

SoftMaker develops and markets an office suite called SoftMaker Office
which is available for Windows, Linux, Android, Windows CE, and Windows
Mobile (all sharing most of the same source code):

http://www.softmaker.com/english/of_en.htm

In SoftMaker Office 2012 we added the eM Client solution for e-mail and
calendaring from the company of the same name. We were not really
satisfied with the way the partnership went, so about one year ago we
made the decision to dump eM Client and replace it with Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is in fact the e-mail client that most people here at
SoftMaker have been using for many years.

During the last 12 months, we have written code that integrates
Thunderbird better with SoftMaker Office visually, adds filing and
navigation features, and undoes some design changes made over the years
by the Thunderbird developers – our version does have a regular menu bar
and a regular title bar for the application window.

Plus, we have written an import filter that converts eM Client databases
(serialized .NET objects inside SQlite, ugh...) to Thunderbird e-mails
and contacts, and Lightning calendars and tasks.

Early on during the development, mainly due to Kent's input, we made the
decision to not fork Thunderbird, but to add functionality through
extensions. This was a good decision because our users can continue
updating Thunderbird through the official mechanism and because they can
decide on their own if they want our added functionality and changed
visuals or not.

The developer who wrote the SoftMaker extensions is now nearly done with
his initial set of tasks and has gained valuable experience in writing
extensions and in some of the internals of Thunderbird. Since we want to
see Thunderbird grow and prosper, I have made the decision that he
should start to work full-time on the Thunderbird project, under Kent's
direction. CardDav integration is the first tasks he's going to grind
his teeth on. He'll post here soon, but right now he has caught the
flu... ;-)

You can find more about our effort at
http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofwtb_en.htm

The international press release is here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/research/markets/news/article.asp?docKey=600-201503160602M2______EUPR_____20890000012675b7_3600-1

Press and blogger reactions (mainly in German-speaking countries) have
been favorable so far. An excerpt:

http://www.heise.de/open/meldung/SoftMaker-will-Thunderbird-als-Mail-Client-in-Office-integrieren-2576766.html
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/22123/softmaker-office-2016-fuer-windows-integriert-thunderbird-und-lightning.html
http://www.itespresso.de/2015/03/17/softmaker-integriert-thunderbird-in-office-2016/
http://www.gizmodo.de/2015/03/16/softmaker-engagiert-sich-beim-thunderbird-projekt.html
https://www.soeren-hentzschel.at/mozilla/thunderbird/2015/03/16/softmaker-liefert-office-2016-mit-thunderbird-aus-und-unterstuetzt-entwicklung-von-thunderbird/
http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/softmaker-unterstuetzt-thunderbird-projekt/
http://www.pctipp.ch/news/firmen/artikel/thunderbird-erhaelt-prominente-hilfe-82023/

But the story is now starting to be picked up internationally as well:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=98197&sid=f05924ebaaf84318b493361e75ab3338
http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=41861
http://planetadiego.com/2015/03/17/softmaker-se-suma-al-desarrollo-de-thunderbird/

Feel free to ask me any questions.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[R Kent James]

Just as a followup, I did manage to make this connection, so that I now
have a meeting scheduled with Mitchell Baker on Friday in the Bay Area.

Kent James
Chair, Thunderbird Council.

On 3/17/2015 10:31 AM, R Kent James wrote:
> I've been trying to get Mozilla management to talk to me about some of
> these issues, so far without success. We need to discuss:
>
> 1) Access to information about existing Thunderbird business
> relationships,
> 2) Where and how we can collect and spend donations, and
> 3) How can we negotiate future business relationships, such as this
> SoftMaker arrangement.
>
>

[R Kent James]

I was able to secure earlier personal access to much of the ADI data for
Thunderbird, along with permission to publish summaries of that data as
appropriate. I blogged with some of those results earlier. That access
is now ongoing, so I will continue to report on specific aspects of the
data in the future, or can answer specific questions. Our friends in the
SeaMonkey project helped us get that access.

In general, Mozilla is not setup to allow broad access to volunteers to
corporate systems like ADI statistics. This is simply because it takes
additional effort to provide isolation of roles, and it has not been a
significant issue in the past. Generally we are in the process of slowly
getting access to various roles within Mozilla that we need to run the
Thunderbird project, but there is always some concern because these same
tools typically give us the power to make mistakes that could have huge
negative impacts on Firefox. For that reason they are cautious, and
rightfully so. Access to specific roles is likely to be limited to a few
people in most cases. It is not always the same people though, I only
have personal access to a few of the critical roles. We are making slow
progress on these permission issues, but overall satisfactory progress.
We need less and less staff intervention to ship Thunderbird releases,
for example.

So in short, permissions is an area that is proceeding adequately, and
is not likely to be a subject of my conversation with Mitchell.

:rkent

On 3/19/2015 3:42 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> Is getting access to the Thunderbird usage statistics on your list? ;)
>
> It would be very nice to be able to have something reasonably accurate
> that can be published.

[Tanstaafl]

Is getting access to the Thunderbird usage statistics on your list? ;)

It would be very nice to be able to have something reasonably accurate
that can be published.

On 3/18/2015 2:29 PM, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:

[Philipp Kewisch]

Have you seen this?

https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/02/thunderbird-usage-continues-to-grow/

We have access to some amount of usage numbers. It required filing some
bugs, but I don't think this is something that Mitchell needs to worry
about. We just need to make sure that the relevant folks know that we
are allowed to access confidential information and this is the more
general issue that Kent is going to bring up.

Philipp