Retiring Sunbird from AMO
Justin Scott
I'd like to start a discussion on when we should retire Sunbird from
AMO. As I understand it and from reading
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/, Sunbird is no longer
an active project and development efforts have been shifted to
Lightning, which is an add-on for Thunderbird.
Therefore, any add-ons previously for Sunbird should now be listed for
Thunderbird instead and perhaps tagged, categorized, or added to
collections to indicate they work with Lightning/calendar.
Each application officially supported on AMO has a cost on our
developers, testers, servers, and adds complexity. As it seems Sunbird
is no longer officially supported, I'd like to know if there are any
reasons we should continue to support it on AMO.
Some data:
* There are 82 public add-ons on the site whose latest version supports
Sunbird
* There are 12 public add-ons on the site whose latest version supports
ONLY Sunbird
* I'm not sure if Sunbird's active daily users are publicly known so
I'll let someone from that project mention the specifics if they'd like,
but Sunbird has fewer users than many Firefox add-ons on the site.
What retiring would entail:
* Any requests to /sunbird pages would redirect to a page that explains
the status of Sunbird and has links to any relevant
tags/collections/categories to find Lightning-compatible add-ons or
Sunbird-compatible add-ons for people still using the standalone client.
* Update pings and submitting updates to Sunbird add-ons would continue
to work fine
* Any references to Sunbird on AMO would be removed, except the
retirement page mentioned above
We're very interested in feedback from this as no one on the AMO team
knows much about the calendar project. If you feel that Sunbird support
should not be removed, please also mention when you think the
appropriate time would be to remove an unsupported app in your response.
Thanks!
Justin Scott
Ricardo Palomares Martínez
> Therefore, any add-ons previously for Sunbird should now be listed for
> Thunderbird instead and perhaps tagged, categorized, or added to
> collections to indicate they work with Lightning/calendar.
Keep in mind that Lightning also works with SeaMonkey (it is just that
the working version for SM2.0/TB3.0 is not the same than for TB3.1),
so Lightning-related add-ons should also be listed on SeaMonkey
section. I guess the install.rdf and AMO properties for each add-on
should be enough to know about this.
Ricardo Palomares
eviljeff
> Hello,
>
> I'd like to start a discussion on when we should retire Sunbird from
> an active project and development efforts have been shifted to
> Lightning, which is an add-on for Thunderbird.
> * There are 82 public add-ons on the site whose latest version supports
> Sunbird
> * There are 12 public add-ons on the site whose latest version supports
> ONLY Sunbird
Hi,
I'd be interested in seeing a list/search-url that shows what the 12
are. The only Sunbird only addon I can remember coming across was a
theme.
Regardless, with only 12 public addons it doesn't make sense (imo) to
keep supporting it.
Andrew Williamson
Justin Wood (Callek)
Not being a calendar/ developer but a SeaMonkey/c-c developer I would
agree that Sunbird has been disco'd for a long time, and "we" have had
no major efforts to even keep it working on trunk (though if a patch has
been simple/quick its a "why not" case).
That said, with so few sunbird-only, and even less users
([citation-needed]) I think de-emphasizing it in UI of AMO would be the
right choice.
Allowing it to say "Sunbird" when uploading/updating Sunbird addons in
the dev-UI side, is good; but exposing it when not explicitly
user-chosen is bad. And yes, the Sunbird/ addon url choices you express
also sounds good to me.
--
~Justin Wood (Callek)
Justin Scott
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/3719 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4017 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4250 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/6024 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4620 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/5744 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/7542 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/6444 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/77491 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/126534 |
| https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/49356 |
gNeandr
Out of the 12 there are only 2 newer add-on's and one theme compatible
to Sunbird 1.0pre / 1.0b1
The 2 add-on's could be of specific interest
[19.07.2010 19:55] »Justin Scott« wrote:
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/1210 |
> About:Config 0.12 March 5, 2007 Sunbird 0.2 - 0.2+
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/3719 | Date
> Calculator 0.0.1 by Joey Minta Sunbird 0.3a1 - 0.3
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4017 | MacBird-II
> 0.4.4.8 November 26, 2007 http://mozilla-addons.ueuo.com/ Sunbird
> 0.4a1 - 0.8pre
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4250 |
> MacBird-Grey 0.3.4.8 November 26, 2007
> http://mozilla-addons.ueuo.com/ Sunbird 0.4a1 - 0.8pre
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/6024 | SUNRO 0.2
> November 26, 2007
> http://mozilla-addons.ueuo.com/sunbird/index.htm?utm_source=mozilla.org Sunbird
> 0.4a1 - 0.8pre
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4620 | Birthday
> Manager 1.1 February 1, 2008 http://mozilla-addons.ueuo.com/
> Sunbird 0.3.1 - 0.6a1
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/5744 | BloodSun
> 1.1 April 10, 2008 http://home.comcast.net/~dad-316/themes.htm
> Sunbird 0.3.1 - 0.8
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/7542 |
> MinimizeToTray--0.9pre Compatible 0.0.2 April 10, 2009
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/sunbird Sunbird 0.2 - 0.9pre
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/6444 |
> Minimonth/Calendars Splitter 1.0.4 January 8, 2009 Sunbird 0.9 - 0.9
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/77491 | Free/Busy
> 1.0b11 April 5, 2010 http://www.d-wise.com/ Sunbird 0.8 -
> 1.0pre
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/126534 | Dissociate
> Occurrence 1.0.0.20100406 May 28, 2010 Sunbird 0.8 - 1.0pre
> | https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/49356 | Noia
> eXtreme 2.5 May 31, 2010
> http://pagesperso-orange.fr/thunderbird-noia2/ Sunbird 0.2 - 1.0b1
>
eviljeff
I've checked through Justin's list and of the 12 there are only 2
which aren't a theme; mention in the description that they are
duplicating Lightening/Thunderbird style functionality; or are also
compatible with Thunderbird according to AMO.
> |https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/3719 |
> |https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/4620 |
the most recent one was updated 2 1/2 years ago and is only marked to
0.6a of Sunbird. IMO we won't be depriving anyone of functionality if
Sunbird addons are not longer listed.
Simon Paquet
> Hello,
> I'd like to start a discussion on when we should retire Sunbird from
> AMO. As I understand it and from reading
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/, Sunbird is no
> longer an active project and development efforts have been shifted
> to Lightning, which is an add-on for Thunderbird.
>
> [...]
>
> What retiring would entail:
> * Any requests to /sunbird pages would redirect to a page that
> explains the status of Sunbird and has links to any relevant
> tags/collections/categories to find Lightning-compatible add-ons
> or Sunbird-compatible add-ons for people still using the standalone
> client.
>
> * Update pings and submitting updates to Sunbird add-ons would
> continue to work fine
>
> * Any references to Sunbird on AMO would be removed, except the
> retirement page mentioned above
>
> We're very interested in feedback from this as no one on the AMO
> team knows much about the calendar project. If you feel that Sunbird
> support should not be removed, please also mention when you think
> the appropriate time would be to remove an unsupported app in your
> response.
Hi Justin,
thanks for the outreach. From looking at our recent statistics, the
number of active Sunbird users is now far below that of Lightning
users (we have about 20 Lightning users for each Sunbird user), so
it absolutely makes sense to retire Sunbird from AMO by following the
plan that you laid out.
I'm one of the people who is more intimately involved with the Calendar
project, but final decisions are made by Philipp, our project lead.
Therefore I'd suggest that you wait for 2-3 more weeks and see if
Philipp voices his approval or his opposition to this plan here.
If he doesn't until then, then please go ahead. I hope that works for
you. If you need a calendar app that reminds you of this date, you
know where to look for it :-))
Cya
Simon
--
Thunderbird/Calendar Localisation (L10n) Coordinator
Thunderbird l10n blog: http://thunderbird-l10n.blogspot.com
Calendar website maintainer: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar
Calendar developer blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar
Philipp Kewisch
One thing I am really missing is a search functionality to extend
extensions. Right now there is no easy way to find all extensions that
require Lightning which makes it really hard for Lightning users to
see how they can extend the calendar functionality. The Sunbird AMO
page showed at least some extensions (i.e featured addons, etc). Not
sure how non-power Lightning users search for addons, but if they do
at all they probably use the addons manager. This means they might be
disappointed, since they will mostly find Thunderbird extensions.
In my most wild dreams, I see an extension landing page that has its
own featured addons and search functionality. The extension author
could set the featued addons via developer tools. Other extensions
(i.e firebug) could also profit from something like this. I realize
this might be too much work and complex UI though. But maybe a simple
version with a prominent link like "Show other addons compatible with
Lightning" that throws up the right search might also do it.
Anyway, I can live with turning off Sunbird's AMO page, some things
I'd like to see in the retirement page:
* hotlinks to addon pages should obviously show the retirement page
too.
* Aside from explaining the situation, there should be a link to the
addon page but with Thunderbird as an app.
Also, does turning off the Sunbird AMO page influence addon statistics
for shared addons in any way?
So much for now,
Philipp
Robert Kaiser
> One thing I am really missing is a search functionality to extend
> extensions. Right now there is no easy way to find all extensions that
> require Lightning which makes it really hard for Lightning users to
> see how they can extend the calendar functionality.
Well, the addons system of Mozilla 2.0 doesn't even support extension
dependencies any more...
Robert Kaiser
--
Note that any statements of mine - no matter how passionate - are never
meant to be offensive but very often as food for thought or possible
arguments that we as a community needs answers to. And most of the time,
I even appreciate irony and fun! :)