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0 pointswalrus015y ago0 comments

> 3. Invest more in Thunderbird the application and develop Thunderbird the privacy focus email service for independent professionals and small businesses.

While I agree that Thunderbird as a standalone Windows/MacOS/Linux desktop email client is a very important project, and needs to be continued, maintained and refined, the paradigm of email has moved on somewhat since 2003.

People need to be able to do more than just access email on a desktop or laptop.

I'd like to see two new things under the Thunderbird/Mozilla name:

a) a fully open source GPL licensed, self-hostable, webmail server application that fulfills the same functions as rainloop or roundcube, implemented in the Thunderbird name. Maybe it could have its own new GUI to run inside the browser, or it could offer an optional "traditional" GUI that is similar to the Thunderbird desktop client. This has a possibility for a natural symbiotic relationship with Firefox, as the best and most optimal web browser client to view the webmail.

b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source.

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5 comments · 5 top-level

secabeen5y ago

> b) a Thunderbird Android email client. There should be no reason why people should be locked into the default Android google/gmail email client. I can't even view message headers on it. I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source.

K-9 mail should satisfy these requirements. It's been slow moving development wise the last two years, but it is not dead:

https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail

https://github.com/k9mail/k-9

Macha5y ago

> a fully open source GPL licensed, self-hostable, webmail server application that fulfills the same functions as rainloop or roundcube, implemented in the Thunderbird name. Maybe it could have its own new GUI to run inside the browser, or it could offer an optional "traditional" GUI that is similar to the Thunderbird desktop client. This has a possibility for a natural symbiotic relationship with Firefox, as the best and most optimal web browser client to view the webmail.

If this shares neither the thunderbird feature set or UX, why does it have to be called thunderbird? I still use thunderbird because it's UX efficiency for dealing with large volumes of mail blow away the Gmail and Fastmail web interfaces.

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ericd5y ago

I really like a). More broadly, I’ve thought for a long time that we should to make it turnkey-easy for people to deploy their own services, to start re-decentralizing a lot of the services that have trended toward centralization - email, blog/personal news hosting, photo sharing. Like built-into-their-router easy, to avoid the need to set up port forwarding. Mozilla seems like a great place for a lot of this to start, given their focus on the open web, privacy, etc. Many of the details involved in hosting this stuff can be a bit messy for laymen, but I think defaults could be chosen and a minimum subset of the features could be polished to the point of user friendliness.

feanaro5y ago

> a Thunderbird Android email client. [...] I want a full featured "power user" IMAP-over-TLS + SMTP email client for Android that is also open source.

Here it is: https://email.faircode.eu/

Unlike K-9, it is very actively developed.

criddell5y ago

I've been using Thunderbird for close to 15 years and 2021 is probably the year I'll stop because of how poorly it works with Office 365. It's kind of a bummer but hard to get that upset about it because I really don't like email to start with.

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