Thunderbird's Vision: Survey Results + Next Steps

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi Thunderbird community,

(For readability, "we" in this email is the council, "you" is the
Thunderbird community excluding the council.)

Thanks for your input on the survey discussion and sorry for the delay
in processing your results, we were busy with the holidays. Christmas is
always so sudden...

In this mail, we compare your aggregated responses with ours, and build
upon that to map out the discussion ahead. From here on, the discussion
is open, feel free to get involved in any way you want.


1. Survey results

For those of you who wondered why we asked these specific five
questions: they are leading questions aiming to identify where each
person stands and what future they envision for the project. As that
works best if people are not influenced by the replies of others, we did
not share our own replies beforehand. Here they are:

What are the first 5 words that spring to mind when asked to describe
Thunderbird?
- email (x4)
- open-source (x4)
- open standards / interoperable (x3)
- communication (x3)
- privacy (x3)
- powerful (x2)
- secure (x2)
- decentralized (x2)
- desktop (x2)
- configurable / extensible (x2)
- free (x2)
- multi-platform
- data ownership
- respectful
- community
- bold
- bird
Besides some outliers here and there and some shifts in frequency, that
has a lot in common with your responses. The overall most popular topics
are "open-source" and "configurable / extensible". But what's
interesting is that we did not think of negative points, while your list
includes two common negative topics: "slow / sluggish" and "outdated /
ugly / cumbersome".

If you like visualize things, you can also have a look at the word cloud
attached to this mail. It was generated directly from all 18 responses.
...if you're wondering about the shape: it's supposed to be a bird ;)


What is it that Thunderbird does best?
While most responses do not actually reduce it down to a single best
thing, we had a similar range of responses (common topics are "handling
lots of email" and "multi-platform"). Notably, there is a predominance
of email-related responses, so that seems to be the one area people
agree Thunderbird is best in.


What makes Thunderbird different?
We all seem to agree that important factors are Thunderbird being
open-source and not tied to commercial interests, as well as
Thunderbird's extensibility and customizability. Again, we saw the world
more peachy, though – there were quite a few mostly minor negative
aspects in your responses as well.

What would you like others to think of Thunderbird?
We did this one in pairs; our responses were
- Professional grade, polished product. Better than a product you might
pay for.
- Successful open source project, Free (Donate, donate)
- Respects the user -> user's needs, user's choices, user's privacy
Again, there is a large overlap between our and your responses. Our
responses seem to represent the three dominant topics in your replies:
reliability / polish, freedom and a focus on the user.


2. Hot topics

During our discussions after taking the survey, we mapped out a lot of
common ground. Your responses confirmed that this is common ground for
the community as a whole: important aspects for a vision include being
open (both in terms of open source as well as open protocols), reliable
and user-focused.

That being said, there was also some disagreement about the scope of the
vision: we are not yet united on whether the vision should include the
project's identity, or only focus on the product "Thunderbird".
Furthermore, there is disagreement on whether a vision should include
concrete expansion areas, like mobile and/or enterprise.


3. Next steps

As next step, we hope to distill aspects of the vision into concise
snippets (a few words max). We can then build the "official" vision from
these snippets.

That being said, the important part is not getting an official vision at
the end, but going through the process of reducing the big topics into
small words: this kind of summarization work helps to truly understand
the essence of the project.

The discussion is now open. Please note that council members participate
in public discussions as individuals, unless stated otherwise.

Leading questions to start:

Where do you see the most dire need for improvement in Thunderbird,
and what 1-3 words of your personal vision for Thunderbird is that
based on?

- or -

What do you consider the best aspect of Thunderbird, and what 1-3
words of your personal vision for Thunderbird represent that part?


Thanks for being involved in Thunderbird,
The Thunderbird Council


PS: if you want to provide constructive criticism without discussing
high-level vision, you can find suitable communication channels for your
topic on https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/#communication

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi *,

> Where do you see the most dire need for improvement in Thunderbird,
> and what 1-3 words of your personal vision for Thunderbird is that
> based on?
> - or -
> What do you consider the best aspect of Thunderbird, and what 1-3
> words of your personal vision for Thunderbird represent that part?

Funnily enough, both questions have the same answer to me: extensions.

Thunderbird is one of the few applications that shape around my needs,
instead of me shaping around the application's features. To facilitate
that, it provides both built-in features to customize the experience, as
well as an add-on interface for developers to amend Thunderbird in any
way imaginable. The latter part is, to me, one of the shiny things that
make Thunderbird stand out from 'similar' tools.

And it is also a part that is in dire need of improvement: the new
WebExtension APIs are still far away from being sufficient for the
majority of add-ons. While John did some amazing work and enabled the
whole developer community to get further than I dared to hope a year
ago, there is still a lot of ground to cover.

There is also a need for some clarifications on the strategy front,
which is probably even more important for this vision discussion: we do
not yet have an official long-term plan on what capabilities add-ons
should have.

Currently, users are free to install or use add-ons from any source,
without any limits imposed on them. I like that, as that gives the user
the maximal freedom to adapt Thunderbird for their personal needs.

That being said, there are some suggestions floating around to prevent
users from installing add-ons that are not explicitly authorized by some
official authority ('mandatory signing') and/or that use advanced
features ('disallowing experiments'). To me, that seems detrimental:
while I do support guiding users away from potential danger, they should
always have the last word when it comes to their personal installation
of Thunderbird.

So thinking about these two question leads me to the same first word for
my vision for Thunderbird: 'extensibility' – the user's freedom to make
Thunderbird their own.

I'm looking forward to your comments + vision snippets!

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

[David Reagan]

Hey all,

Here are my thoughts on what I think Thunderbird's goals should be, not sure how well they map to a "vision" but I think they're similar.

## Goals:

A) Maintaining, or increasing, Thunderbird's current stability, feature set, and supported platforms.

B) Improving the Extension API, and making sure extension developers can rely on it.

C) Implementing synchronization for settings and data between devices.

D) Adding mobile OS's to the list of supported platforms.

E) Improving the Calendar, Address Book, Chat, and RSS Reader features.


### Notes on A and B
I don't have a lot to say on A and B, they just seem like the areas that should receive the highest priority.

### Notes on C and D
I consider C and D to be related. While I have many laptops and desktops, most people don't. But most people have at least a laptop and a phone. Keeping those two items in sync would be a seriously helpful feature for many people.

#### Syncing
For syncing, I'd love to see it implemented in a manner similar to how you connect Syncthing clients together. Data is never stored on a third party server, and you can limit it to your local network. (Firefox sync is great, but I really don't like having to authenticate to a third party server.) Syncthing's discovery servers are also something a lot more affordable than having to deal with transferring petabytes of email data.

#### Mobile App
I think the mobile app idea has been looked at, but it also seems to be somewhat controversial.

Here's why I think Thunderbird should take it on. First, none of the open source Android email programs I could find were both maintained and feature complete. A lot of them obviously died because no community built up around them.

Thunderbird has the name recognition that would let people know they can trust it, and the community is already excellent. So any mobile version of Thunderbird would definitely reach feature completeness, and would stay maintained.

I think part of people objections are related to how different mobile apps are from desktop apps. It would require a very different code base. (At least I think, I've not actually built any mobile apps...)

If the obvious route of building from scratch, or some kind of port of desktop TB, is untenable, here is another idea:

Find a good open source client and work with that community to turn it into the Thunderbird client. Basically, we add our community to theirs, to give the app the resources it needs to take off. And if we implement syncing, then every current desktop user will likely at least try the mobile app.

One of the biggest things we might be able to provide is language translation. I know that's a hard thing to do right, and Thunderbird, plus Mozilla, have the processes and infrastructure in place to make it work.


### Notes on E
I put the items in E at the bottom because the only strictly email related one is the Address Book. And, while it's kinda bad right now, it is functional. And I think a lot of the ways I'd improve those items would be better left to extensions. That said, if you consider Thunderbird to be a "communication" tool, rather than strictly an "email" tool, those items are very important. So eventually it would be awesome to turn them into world class features. I'd just rather see A - D taken care of first.

## Misc thoughts
If we have the developer availability, it would be interesting to refactor TB in a way that makes it easy to break away from anything Firefox if Firefox goes in a direction we don't like.

I really hope any user interface redesigns are triggered by the TB community and not by a dependency on Firefox.

Long term, if there was some way to bridge a git pull request workflow into TB's HG based workflow, I think that would increase the number of developers willing to contribute. (Let's not start the whole git vs. hg discussion again. TB is firmly in the hg camp right now, and we have better things to do than bicker about it.)

## Final thoughts
Thunderbird is a very solid email client already. I really believe it's almost as feature complete as an email client can get. So I hope the community makes sure that we don't screw that up by chasing changes that are too much for us to handle. Or by getting all up in arms over how the project is run. * ponders if a mobile app is too much... *

Anyway, those are my thoughts on where TB should go. If I ever find the time to learn enough C and Javascript that I can, finally, do more than talk, I'll be sure to help out. Life just hasn't let me do that yet.

- David Reagan

[Chris Ilias]

Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg) wrote on 2021-01-22 9:23 PM:

As next step, we hope to distill aspects of the vision into concise snippets (a few words max). We can then build the "official" vision from these snippets.

Many items listed in the previous thread are not reflective of what I've seen from Thunderbird users over the years. I haven't seen much interest in the fact that it's open-source, or taking messages off the server (I'd bet Gmail is the most popular MSP among Thunderbird users). A common theme that I see both here and among users is about control and ownership of your email. That applies to the messages themselves and the experience. The privacy and security stem from that. You don't have to log into a website, and as a standalone app, it doesn't matter if you're using Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook (Hotmail), or whatever. In fact, it's one place where you can manage all of those accounts, and the interoperability makes you feel like you're not locked into anything. You can move messages wherever you want, and set up a UI that fits your workflow.

Having said that, this seems focused on email. Where do the calendar, RSS feeds, newsgroups, and chat fit in?

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

> I haven't seen much interest in the fact that it's open-source

I think that does depend on which crowds you're asking. In my personal
experience, Thunderbird being "free" is a major selling point – for some
the 'as in beer' part is more important than 'as in freedom', though.
Maybe that's what you wanted to express?

> the interoperability makes you feel like you're not locked into
> anything.

Given that 'open standards' was a commonly noted term, I do feel like
this was part of the initial feedback. "interoperability" could be a
nice phrasing for the vision, though.

> Having said that, this seems focused on email. Where do the calendar,
> RSS feeds, newsgroups, and chat fit in?

For me personally, another important part of the vision would be
"communication/organization hub" (maybe that can be condensed even
further?).

Of course you could also say that "email" is the only part that should
be in the vision, and everything else is only important as far as it
improves the email experience (like handling invitation email, etc.).
While that does not immediately ring true for my personal vision,
exploring that angle might be worthwhile if you consider
"communication/organization hub" too blurry / big?

Kind regards,
Dirk / rsjtdrjgfuzkfg

Am 24.01.21 um 22:35 schrieb Chris Ilias:

[Mike Dewhirst]

I'm very interested in taking messages off the server but only on one machine and none of my devices. Otherwise a big +1 from me.

Having said that, this seems focused on email.

Naturally

Where do the calendar, RSS feeds, newsgroups, and chat fit in?

Nowhere for me. A calendar? The clock/alarm on my device works for me. My calendar is secure on paper. RSS is so last century. Chat - taken over by chatbots.

Love Thunderbird. It is a public good. Heroic stuff.

Cheers

Mike

-- 
Signed email is an absolute defence against phishing. This email has
been signed with my private key. If you import my public key you can
automatically decrypt my signature and be sure it came from me. Just
ask and I'll send it to you. Your email software can handle signing.

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi *,

I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware that the vision discussion
is technically still open, although it does not see a lot of public
interest.

From my personal point of view, the future vision will likely revolve
around the snippets mentioned so far:
- extensibility
- free
- interoperability
- communication/organization hub

As well as around the popular topics gathered during the survey that
were not yet explicitly mentioned afterwards:
- email
- reliability
- respect towards the user

In the wider scope of Thunderbird as an organization (in contrast to the
just the product), I'd personally add 'community-driven', which also
came up in some contexts – although one could argue that that is about
'identity' and not about 'vision'...

The council will soon resume working on a starting point for bigger
strategy discussions, and at least I personally will enter these
discussions with the listed topics in mind.

So if you disagree with that direction or want to clarify some aspects,
now would be the time to speak up. ;)

Kind regards,
Dirk / rsjtdrjgfuzkfg

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi *,

An organizational note: Sending vision ideas just to me prevents all
other people from seeing them and engaging with your contribution.

So if you want to participate in the discussion, please respond directly
on the public list: Thunderbird has a handy "Reply List" button, but you
can also reply normally or start a new mail and change the recipient to
tb-pl...@mozilla.org.

You don't need my (or anyone else's) permission to post, so don't ask if
you can post – just do!

(I write this clarification as I received multiple private responses,
but there hasn't been a single public one.)

Kind regards,
Dirk

Am 22.02.21 um 01:57 schrieb Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg):

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi Óvári,

> The list is moderated. Unfortunately on many occasions our posts have
> been blocked.
If the moderation blocks your mail, you should get a mail about that
which – usually – contains a hint on where to post instead.

The moderation should not limit opinions or authors, their purpose is
just to keep things that are completely off-topic from reaching the list
(like end user support requests or bug reports, which are better suited
elsewhere).

If you feel like a message was wrongly blocked, you can still reply
privately *after* attepting to send the email on the public list.

> It also seems that our suggestions are not wanted as even the current
> Thunderbird Town Hall is being run using Zoom
I would also prefer open and e2e-encrypted services to be used, so your
opinion is definitively not unwanted. But while I agree that Zoom is a
bad fit, it is not realistic to assume that all good suggestions cause
immediate changes or reactions. Especially not if the majority prefers a
different path out of comfort. ;)

(In this particular case, there could also be accessibility issues with
web-only tools – Zoom is sadly much more compatible with accessibility
software, or at least was about half a year ago. Not sure if that is the
reason, though; I wasn't involved in the planning of the town hall
meeting so I cannot contribute to that discussion.)

Kind regards,
Dirk / rsjtdrjgfuzkfg

Am 23.02.21 um 00:05 schrieb Óvári:
> Hi Dirk,
>
> Please see inline comment below.
>
> Thank you
>
> Óvári

>
> On 23/2/21 4:51 am, Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg) wrote:
>> Hi *,
>>
>> An organizational note: Sending vision ideas just to me prevents all
>> other people from seeing them and engaging with your contribution.
>>
>> So if you want to participate in the discussion, please respond
>> directly on the public list: Thunderbird has a handy "Reply List"
>> button, but you can also reply normally or start a new mail and change
>> the recipient to tb-pl...@mozilla.org.
>>
>> You don't need my (or anyone else's) permission to post, so don't ask
>> if you can post – just do!
>

> The list is moderated. Unfortunately on many occasions our posts have
> been blocked.
>
> It also seems that our suggestions are not wanted as even the current
> Thunderbird Town Hall is being run using Zoom, when seems is
> fundamentally wrong to the foundation of what Thunderbird stands for:
> free/libre and open-source software. Options instead of Zoom are Jitsi
> Meet (https://meet.jit.si/  https://jitsi.org/
> https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/) and Jami (https://jami.net/
> https://jami.biz)

[Michael Peddemors]

On 2021-02-22 4:21 p.m., Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg) wrote:
> But while I agree that Zoom is a bad fit,

If the email questions about the importance of open software as
Thunderbird's mandate, then yes, by all means +1

However, I just hate having to try to prove I am a human every time ;)

Worse, if I am early, then I have to do it a second time..

TB can fire up their own Jitsi on a raspberry pi, and it will probably
meet all the needs of these meetings ;)




--
"Catch the Magic of Linux..."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Peddemors, President/CEO LinuxMagic Inc.
Visit us at http://www.linuxmagic.com @linuxmagic
A Wizard IT Company - For More Info http://www.wizard.ca
"LinuxMagic" a Registered TradeMark of Wizard Tower TechnoServices Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
604-682-0300 Beautiful British Columbia, Canada

This email and any electronic data contained are confidential and intended
solely for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed.
Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely
those of the author and are not intended to represent those of the company.

[MJWestkamper]

A thought....

Today digital correspondence has become not only a means to exchange
ideas, build on topics of discussion and document issues, it has become
an archive of our lives, both personal and business. We evolved from
charcoal on limestone to pencil and paper to movable type and on to
typewriters and carbon paper. In those forms there was a permanence to
our thoughts. Eons later I can still understand what a person was saying
when there I see an auroch with an arrow headed for it or a Shakespeare
sonnet in Olde English (with some help) or a carbon copy of my
enlistment papers.  Today our musings are but a wisp of a magnetic spin
that can be lost forever in a nanosecond.

Thunderbird is a state-of-the-art means to collect, collate and
disseminate the writing of a billion souls. But it is impermanent and
poorly curated.

Not all of the stuff we pen is worthy of saving. Maybe most is not, but
some is and will be lost by some errant code in the next Windows update.

I suggest Thunderbird is a place to build the means to add permanence to
the written record, curate the stuff that is worthy and make it
available for posterity. That will be no mean feat, but I suggest it is
a worthy one.

Mike

[Óvári]

Hi Dirk,

Please see inline comment below.

Thank you

Óvári

On 23/2/21 4:51 am, Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg) wrote:

> Hi *,
>
> An organizational note: Sending vision ideas just to me prevents all
> other people from seeing them and engaging with your contribution.
>
> So if you want to participate in the discussion, please respond
> directly on the public list: Thunderbird has a handy "Reply List"
> button, but you can also reply normally or start a new mail and change
> the recipient to tb-pl...@mozilla.org.
>
> You don't need my (or anyone else's) permission to post, so don't ask
> if you can post – just do!

The list is moderated. Unfortunately on many occasions our posts have
been blocked.

It also seems that our suggestions are not wanted as even the current
Thunderbird Town Hall is being run using Zoom, when seems is
fundamentally wrong to the foundation of what Thunderbird stands for:
free/libre and open-source software. Options instead of Zoom are Jitsi
Meet (https://meet.jit.si/  https://jitsi.org/
https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/) and Jami (https://jami.net/  
https://jami.biz)

>

[alta88]

On 22/02/2021 10.51, Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg) wrote:
> You don't need my (or anyone else's) permission to post, so don't ask
> if you can post – just do!

This is a censored list. Do you know what happens to such lists? They
become ghost towns.

I believe you are making a sincere effort to turn around the community
mistrust of the council. But until those responsible for the
weaponization of the CPG as a tool of revenge and silencing are no
longer with this project, it will be rather moot for some to engage in
'vision' discussions.

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi alta88,

TL;DR
- This list is moderated, so mails might get delayed, but on-topic mails
should always come through in the end
- A CPG stats mail is getting drafted; CPG is tamer than it might appear

> This is a censored list.

Do you have any concrete cases to look at? Vague accusations will not
lead to problems getting fixed (if there are any).

I don't want to exclude the possibility of censorship right away, but
while at least one potentially problematic filter word has indeed been
used in the past, the associated filters were not rejecting and I have
not seen any concrete mails that both were rejected and are clearly
on-topic. I thus don't have a reason to suspect the list being filtered
to a larger degree than advertised.

Also, we're discussing censorship on the very list that allegedly is
censored... :P

It is possible that the the issue is just a misunderstanding of what is
and is not on-topic for this list. I'm sure there are multiple low-level
feature requests, end-user questions and other off-topic mails that were
sent in good faith but did not pass review (as this list is for
high-level planning only). In most cases, moderators will send a reply
advising to post elsewhere, but it is possible that does not always happen.

It is also possible that people feel censored simply because the review
process takes time and thus emails arrive out of order. I agree that
that is sometimes confusing, but that's not censorship. ;)

If you have a concrete example and don't trust the list to pass it on,
feel free to add my email as cc or bcc.

> weaponization of the CPG as a tool of revenge and silencing

In the CPG cases the council reviewed and resulted in a ban, the
violator first got warnings, then actively acted against these warnings
until finally a ban was issued. At least in the prominent case we
reviewed in more detail, the record of violations, warnings and
responses to said warnings looked plausible and matches any information
I have access to.

So I don't feel like CPGs are weaponized; there have been serious
attempts to get violators to stop violating with both warnings and
informal talks before any bans were even considered.

To be clear: this does not mean that no mistakes were made or that the
process is perfect. Everybody seems to agree that there is a lot to
learn from, although there is naturally some disagreement about details.

That being said I do acknowledge that things might look worse for people
limited to information that is publicly available. While I can't share
case details, the council is in the process of preparing a public
statement with a more detailed overview of what (and why) CPGs are, some
statistics regarding past cases and proposed amendments specific to the
Thunderbird community. I hope that these backgrounds help the public to
understand the situation better.

I'm sure that will not satisfy everyone. Every social (=messy) process
will feel a bit unsatisfactory from a theoretical-technical point of
view – and any compromise to improve CPG is certainly no exception. But
in practice, at least as far as I can see, CPG seems to be a lot tamer
on the inside than it might currently appear from the outside.

Kind regards,
Dirk / rsjtdrjgfuzkfg

Am 22.02.21 um 19:27 schrieb alta88:

[CardBook]

Hi All

As the Thunderbird's vision is still open, I'd like to introduce a point
that I haven't seen debated....

I think we are now a mature product that allows us to deeply prospect
into the corporate business and it would be great to propose a corporate
offer for them. That's why it would be nice to have a list of certified
email servers (maybe this page still exists) and why not developping a
paid support for these companies ?

my two cents...

Philippe

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 23/02/2021 9:25 am, MJWestkamper wrote:

A thought....

That's a very good thought.

Today digital correspondence has become not only a means to exchange ideas, build on topics of discussion and document issues, it has become an archive of our lives, both personal and business. We evolved from charcoal on limestone to pencil and paper to movable type and on to typewriters and carbon paper. In those forms there was a permanence to our thoughts. Eons later I can still understand what a person was saying when there I see an auroch with an arrow headed for it or a Shakespeare sonnet in Olde English (with some help) or a carbon copy of my enlistment papers.  Today our musings are but a wisp of a magnetic spin that can be lost forever in a nanosecond.

Thunderbird is a state-of-the-art means to collect, collate and disseminate the writing of a billion souls. But it is impermanent and poorly curated.

I think TB is the conduit. The DBMS is the store. Each one of those billion is responsible for curating.

Not all of the stuff we pen is worthy of saving. Maybe most is not, but some is and will be lost by some errant code in the next Windows update.

I suggest Thunderbird is a place to build the means to add permanence to the written record, curate the stuff that is worthy and make it available for posterity. That will be no mean feat, but I suggest it is a worthy one.

I agree. Very worthy.

Maybe the API can play a part and someone capable of building a curating/archiving device will be the next TB hero?

Until then, long live POP and personal management of archives!

YMMV

M :-)

Mike

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

[John Bieling]

Hi Óvári ,

we have been using jitsi for our community meetings in the town where I
live and we had to abandon it. Just because something is open source, it
does not necessarily mean it is useful for a given task.

jitsi does not properly work in Firefox and has huge issues with
sessions with more then 5 people. That is my own experience having the
direct comparison to zoom.

We switched to zoom even if it means to pay for it. But the time lost by
*every* participant due to technical issues with jitsi was unbearable.

John

[Will]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 12:13:49 +0100
John Bieling <jo...@thunderbird.net> wrote:

> we have been using jitsi for our community meetings in the town where
> I live and we had to abandon it. Just because something is open
> source, it does not necessarily mean it is useful for a given task.
>
> jitsi does not properly work in Firefox and has huge issues with
> sessions with more then 5 people. That is my own experience having
> the direct comparison to zoom.
>
> We switched to zoom even if it means to pay for it. But the time lost
> by *every* participant due to technical issues with jitsi was
> unbearable.

As a comparison we use a self hosted Jitsi on a VM with 2 cores and 4
Gb for an online playreading group with a dozen or more participants
with a variety of clients, and with no technical issues.

Even with this low spec it would handle considerably more connections.

The ONLY problem has been people not being able to follow links, and
type in usernames/passwords. We've had no 'technical glitches' at all.

We started using it because know it will work cross platform with just
a browser - no app is actually required. KISS.

No, browsers are not perfect and (regrettably) Chromium seems
much better with Audio/Visual than Firefox currently (cough cough
Mozilla)

And I have seen people tie themselves in knots trying to run Zoom
in a browser (the last thing it actually wants you to do) because they
don't want to, or can't install an app.

A definite case of YMMV......

[jwq]

On 25/02/21 6:50 PM, Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg) wrote:

Do you have any concrete cases to look at?

 I volunteer mine.

 My messages were rejected by the moderator "to avoid further conflict". Forcing silence on one party in favour of another party for the political reason "to avoid further conflict" is the very definition of censorship.

 It's also the conflict management method you use when you don't care about maintaining the relationship with the person you're forcing.

jwq.