Open-sourcing Thunderbird & GitHub

[Hammy Havoc]

Hey all,

 

Long-term Thunderbird user checking in, I’ve also recently come back to using Firefox. Absolutely love both applications, the integration of extensions on Android is also ingenious. What’s not to love between desktop and mobile?

 

One of the things that does bother me is that Thunderbird is looking a little dated visually compared to the likes of Nylas N1, and it’s also lacking touch support with swipe gestures and finger-friendly targets. I would really like to contribute to Thunderbird’s UX and bring touch support with a “tablet” mode, this would undoubtedly bring a lot of users back to Thunderbird who have grown accustomed to a UI that’s easy on the eyes and that works on their tablets.

 

Managing Thunderbird via a mailing list is really quite dated in this day and age too, it’s not the best way to manage a project of this scale, and it’s also not public. I’ve been advised by @mozthunderbird on Twitter to raise this with the mailing list.

 

I propose that Thunderbird should be open-sourced to accelerate development, and that it should be on GitHub, as it’s very much the de-facto standard for these projects. Large corporations such as Microsoft and Facebook open-source software on there, and it’s worked well for Mozilla too on GitHub so far.

 

All the best,

Hamual

[Axel Grude]

Dear Hammy,

a quick clarification question on running Thunderbird in "tablet" mode - are you referring to a desktop OS such as Windows or Mac OS on a laptop / hybrid device such as a Microsoft Surface Pro? AFAIK there is no mobile platform version of Thunderbird planned; what device do you use yours on?

thanks,
  Axel

--

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

Subject:Open-sourcing Thunderbird & GitHub
From:Hammy Havoc
To:Tb-planning
Sent: Monday, 09/05/2016 07:12:31 07:12 GMT ST +0100 [Week 19]

_______________________________________________
tb-planning mailing list
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[Sebastian]

Hi,

On 05/09/2016 08:12 AM, Hammy Havoc wrote:
> I propose that Thunderbird should be open-sourced

Thunderbird is open source. See here for docs:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Downloading_Source_Archives
But its not easy to download it:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Getting_comm-central
This is an obstacle in my eyes. Usually you can do a `git clone ..`
install some -dev packages and do `make` for a build.

Sebastian

> to accelerate development, and that it should be on GitHub, as it’s
> very much the de-facto standard for these projects. Large corporations
> such as Microsoft and Facebook open-source software on there, and it’s
> worked well for Mozilla too on GitHub so far.
>
>
>
> All the best,
>
> Hamual
>
>
>

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

> --
> python programming - mail server - photo - video - https://sebix.at
> cryptographic key at https://sebix.at/DC9B463B.asc and on public keyservers

[Patrick Cloke]

On 5/9/16 2:12 AM, Hammy Havoc wrote:

Hey all,

 

Long-term Thunderbird user checking in, I’ve also recently come back to using Firefox. Absolutely love both applications, the integration of extensions on Android is also ingenious. What’s not to love between desktop and mobile?

I'm not sure what this integration is. As far as I know, there's no integration between Thunderbird and Android.

Managing Thunderbird via a mailing list is really quite dated in this day and age too, it’s not the best way to manage a project of this scale, and it’s also not public. I’ve been advised by @mozthunderbird on Twitter to raise this with the mailing list.

I'm not really sure what you're referring to here. The Thunderbird community has a variety of ways to communicate: a mailing list, bug tracker and IRC. This is pretty standard in the open-source world. The planning of Thunderbird is completely open and public, so I think there's some misunderstanding here.

I propose that Thunderbird should be open-sourced to accelerate development, and that it should be on GitHub, as it’s very much the de-facto standard for these projects. Large corporations such as Microsoft and Facebook open-source software on there, and it’s worked well for Mozilla too on GitHub so far.

To repeat. Thunderbird *IS* open-sourced (and has always been). I would not say GitHub is a "de-facto" standard, but it is pretty commonly used. It has a lot of drawbacks, however, especially for large complex projects, like Thunderbird. It might be reasonable to reconsider this as we move further off Mozilla's infrastructure, this would also cause a shift in VCS, however, which is likely to be contentious.

--Patrick

[al...@instantbird.org]

On Mon, May 9, 2016, at 02:22 PM, Sebastian wrote:
> But its not easy to download it:
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Getting_comm-central
> This is an obstacle in my eyes. Usually you can do a `git clone ..`
> install some -dev packages and do `make` for a build.

It is in fact not much different than the steps you mention. There are
some step-by-step instructions here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Simple_Thunderbird_build

There is in fact a github mirror for those who prefer to use git (many
mozilla contributors do), but that's a bit more effort to set up.
https://github.com/mozilla/releases-comm-central/

[Nomis101 🐝]

Am 09.05.16 um 14:22 schrieb Sebastian:

> But its not easy to download it:
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Getting_comm-central
> This is an obstacle in my eyes. Usually you can do a `git clone ..`

What do mean "not easy to download"? What is difficult in "$ hg clone
xy" instead of "$ git clone xy"?

[Joshua Cranmer 🐧]

On 5/9/2016 12:45 PM, Nomis101 🐝 wrote:

Am 09.05.16 um 14:22 schrieb Sebastian:

But its not easy to download it:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Getting_comm-central
This is an obstacle in my eyes. Usually you can do a `git clone ..`

What do mean "not easy to download"? What is difficult in "$ hg clone
xy" instead of "$ git clone xy"?

The need to download two repositories, I'm guessing.

-- 
Joshua Cranmer
Thunderbird and DXR developer
Source code archæologist

[Nomis101 🐝]

Am 10.05.16 um 03:55 schrieb Joshua Cranmer 🐧:

> On 5/9/2016 12:45 PM, Nomis101 🐝 wrote:
>> Am 09.05.16 um 14:22 schrieb Sebastian:
>>> But its not easy to download it:
>>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Source_Code/Getting_comm-central
>>> This is an obstacle in my eyes. Usually you can do a `git clone ..`
>> What do mean "not easy to download"? What is difficult in "$ hg clone
>> xy" instead of "$ git clone xy"?
>
> The need to download two repositories, I'm guessing.

Depends if you are using cypress or not or if you have included this
step in your mozconfig. But yes, normally you have to, which is one
single additional step. I only wanted to point out, that in my eyes it
is not difficult to get the TB source code and build it, compared to
other open source projects. And I have build a lot of them in my life.