Mozilla Creates New Internet Mail and Communications Company

Mozilla has announced a new initiative to overhaul email and internet communications in general. The new company, MailCo, will be given $3 million in startup capital from Mozilla to start with the Thunderbird code and work from there. MailCo will be led by David Ascher of ActiveState fame and, according to him, will be a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit.

Profit?

will be a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit.

Quick! When's the IPO?!?

Before anyone hates

Before anyone even brings this up, the reason they usually do for-profit instead of not-for-profit is there is a crapload more bureaucracy associated with a not-for-profit and they'll end up spending a lot of money dealing with it.

What madness is this?!

Fool! Do you not know that profit is the antithesis of open source? Taking one dollar in profit makes you no different from Microsoft! Next you'll be hoarding your sources and throwing chairs!

Yadda yadda yadda, etc, and so forth.

Re:What madness is this?!

This is Sparta?

::Shrugs:: Yeah, I know, I'm leaving.

Re:What madness is this?!

Good, we were about to taser you.

Chance to fix email?

If they want to make money, they should fix spam and privacy.
Email should have been designed with end to end encryption from the beginning.
And I'm tired of email being seen as just another database resource to be parsed for targeted advertising.

Integrate SpamBayes!

they should fix spam

The first thing they need to do is integrate spambayes. Thunderbird's current spam filtering sucks. Spambayes works great. For the love of god, somebody please do it already!

Lost Cause

What's the point? From everything I keep hearing in the news, nobody uses email anymore. If Mozilla and "MailCo" really want to make a difference, they should start writing Facebook and MySpace email clients. Remember, the internet is not about open protocols and clients -- it's about one single website acting as the singular point of contact and communication for the entire globe! And of course, when people leave MySpace for facebook, all you have to do (instead of simply continuing to email them at their existing email address), is go to facebook, sign up for another account. Add the person. Have them add you. And then make sure that you add it to the growing pile of sites you check every day, so you can keep in touch with said idiot who refuses to use email.

Don't let code rot by "employees"

Look at the original Ximian. I mean, writing Evolution was the core USP of whatever Ximian became into. But somewhere on the way into building an open source email client/PIM/Outlook-killer, the Evolution codebase filled up with what I can only call "employee code" (i.e This fixes the bug now, we'll see what it breaks in QA).

I've tried hacking around there, but eventually ended up back in thunderbird land [dotgnu.info]. But on that side of the fence, some of the problems are purely due to over-engineered modularity (yes ... yes, we all love XPCOM [*cough* bonobo], but not that much). And considering I've weaned most of my relatives off Outlook Express with thunderbird, migrating them to Kmail was kinda too hard to have a point.

In short, "do it well" with hackers and don't just hack it up with code written by employees to meet deadlines. Because I sure as hell would love a email client that I could sic my sister/cousins on (she runs linux now, without any clue beyond "clicky clicky") and hack on when I get a brilliant idea once in a while (for example, a pluggable addressbook api - ala kmail's hooks [linux.com])

Start a list of requirements you'd suggest.

#1. Lots of hooks. One of the reasons that Outlook/Exchange is so popular is that anyone can write an app that uses them and become "emain enabled". Yes, I know this is USUALLY (99.9%+) the WRONG way to do it (why do I need Outlook installed to monitor web traffic?) but I'm sure that it can be done correctly.

#2. Online and live BACKUPS! No more shutting down the server to get a decent backup OR buying expensive database backup software.

#3. Shared folders / calendars.

#4. Roles / identities / aliases / whatever. So I can send email as "postmaster" without having to log out of my user account and log into the postmaster account. And so "sales" will go to the entire sales team.

Any other requirements?

Default colours for verified email.

Open your email client. Look at the default colour of the messages. Most of them are black type on a white background.

I want the default colour to indicate that it has passed my tests for LEGITIMATE mail. I do NOT mean that is has not FAILED to be identified as spam.

This is mostly for business users. As the email admin, I should be able to identify the servers that send us legitimate email. So I can add headers that are known only to my system.

Any message NOT containing those headers will be shown in a different colour. Even if they pass all the anti-spam tests.

This is a change from identifying what MAY be spam. This is about identifying established relationships.

I just wish....

... someone would create a nice, easy to use, easy to integrate, mail and calender system for small, medium and larger companies. Something like JES but simpler and easier to configure and maintain....

Just give me....

wireless sync "push" email for my CALENDAR, mail, and contacts to my mobile phone.

That's all I want. Otherwise, the calendar and mail systems out there are perfectly good and well and take care of us without issue.

MS Exchange

I read (skimmed) the article. I was hoping they were going to build a client / server email engine that could replace MS Exchange, but it does not seem so. Does anyone know of a project trying to replace MS Exchange?

Ok, if gonna be another co with google mindset

it wont hurt to have more customer-oriented, people-targeting companies on the web

Umm...

...will be a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit.

What's the emphasis on, the "for-" ?

Mozilla could help out this way

This development is good news. I would like Mozilla to help out with a problem I was having getting a mail server setup. It was with Postfix as the MTA with Dovecot, MySQL and other essential essential sotware.

Could Mozilla create a script that can walk one through the setup of a mail server, just like setting up of Postfix is done using its configuration script.

I can tell you that without a lot of zeal to succeed, setting up a mail server can be an exercise in frustration. There are so many software versions, tutorials and other resources geared to helping out, but these almost always confuse!

I even thought of creating the script but I still need to polish my [bash] Linux shell programming skills.

A script to check whether one has all the components necessary to install a mail server, it goes ahead to list and pick-out/isolate duplicate software, then goes ahead and configures the environment...including the set-up of tables using MySQL or PostgreSQL or whatever. Then finally allows the admin to decide whether the need an ISP style mail server hosting virtual domains or otherwise.

I wonder why we do not have such a script.

Stop The Bus!

A for-profit company that emphasizes public good over profit? If the organization's goals are not profit-taking then why did they set up a for-profit organization?

More to the point, they've got a great technical lead in there right now to commercialize their mail client some more. But at some point they'll bring in a business manager if they get good market traction with the mail product.

Then mozilla has a for-profit entity that, probably will alter the direction of the mozilla foundation. "Impossible!" you say. Well, take a look at the departments that generate the most donations/research funds at Universities as an example. You can deny it all you want, but money and the accompanying power often has unintended effects.

Support gnuzilla! http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ [gnu.org]

$3 Million is not enough

This venture is getting $3 million in start up capital? That's less than the Microsoft Outlook team spends on coffee and donuts. Is this targeted for single users or are they going after enterprise email? If they are going after enterprise then they'll need a lot of money and a lot of years.

MailCo is only a working title

From the original announcement [mozilla.com]:

The new organization doesnt have a name yet, so Ill call it MailCo here. MailCo will be part of the Mozilla Foundation and will serve the public benefit mission of the Mozilla Foundation. (Technically, it will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, just like the Mozilla Corporation.)

For-profit, not new or necessarily bad for Mozilla

FireFox is maintained by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation, which is owned by the Mozilla Foundation. With version 2, Thunderbird was licensed by Mozilla Corporation as well (Thunderbird 1.5 was still Mozilla Foundation).

For-profit is working for them for FireFox, they probably just figured they'd try to do a similar child company for Thunderbird.

Someone mentioned the decreased headaches of being for-profit versus legally being a non-profit, and that could very well be the case. FireFox is doing well. It seems like they know what they are doing. I am always sceptical, it's in my nature, but this doesn't seem to be a red flag. It was a red flag for me when FireFox was moved into for-profit hands, but nothing bad has happened because of it.

lol

"a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit."
ZOMG a golden opportunity! Let me call my broker...

It's finally time to take on Outlook.

Perhaps they could even have several versions, such as a Thunderbird "Lite" that only does email, and a full version that does groupware (calendars, address books, etc.) If they're smart, they'll make an effort to interoperate with existing open source groupware servers such as Citadel [citadel.org] or Kolab [kolab.org] instead of wasting resources building their own. There really is a market for this stuff out there.

Only one shot

For f*ck sake. When will they understand? Why do you think the RIAA moron forwarded all his email to GMAIL? Because it is 10 faster to search in old emails! Outlook / Exchange totally sucks at everything except ONE: Send an invitation to 20 people for a meeting, book the room and the projector in ONE go, see on ONE screen who has accepted and synchronise the whole shitload with even the crappiest Nokia west of Honkong. You gonna make a better email, you better choose: either you make a corporate client with meeting requests built in, or you totally reinvent email. In this case I am talking about slowly building up a network of trusted SSMTP servers (Yahoo and GMAIL to start with) and make it VERY easy for people to avoid spam. Spam should not be detected in the client. The trusted mailservers should tag a mail as "probably spam" and then the client should just run the one rule: throw out everything marked as spam, unless the sender is in my adress book. The day people learn they can get zero spam with zero configuration, that is the day you will kick Outlooks butt (in the domestic marked).

Mozilla is actually dumping its email client

What is actually happening - the way I see it - is that Mozilla (corporation/foundation) is finally abandoning its mail&news client formally. In practice this has been true for years - the number of mail&news developers is currently 2, compared to about... 150 IIRC people working on the browser (although this includes people working on joint core code, such as XPCOM, NSPR, necko, XUL, etc).

In recent years Mozilla is being bankrolled by Google: The choice of Google as the default search engine in Firefox means added revenue of > $5 Billion a year. Google has been paying back with some drops from that bucket - a few tens of Millions a year, see e.g. here [nytimes.com] (NY Times).

It seems to me (as an outsider and an occasional Thunderbird/Seamonkey extension developer) that effectively means that Google's interests have become, and will be from now paramount in Mozilla's policy. Now, if you're Google, you would be more interested in developing and expanding the use of a browser rather than a fast, modern, full-featured and easily extensible mail and newsgroups client (which I feel Thunderbird is _not_yet_ [mozilla.org], unfortunately) - this would mean people will tend not to use your webmail system and your web interface for newsgroups. This is bad for you, since you'll be seeing less ad revenue, you'll be able to collect a lot less useful marketing information about users, and your efforts to centralize users' Internet experience around services-servers-content which you control or are involved in will be impeded. So, obviously, you will want the money you donate to Mozilla - which should have 'rightfully' been divided differently (say, at least 25% for e-mail and news work - and that's being modest and not making 'affirmative action' demands).

Now you just need to spin this somehow, e.g. like this [mozillazine.org].

Oh, goody!

Now we can have a *company* to manage our mail. They're so good about security, companies are. And we're going to elect them to do our mail, voting with our money?

How about a revamp of the email system? I've not heard any good, serious ones. And they all start with "But we'll only be able to talk to part of the crowd, with this change..."

(That's how it starts, but with a multi-homed email server...)

impact on Eudora?

is this going to kill the new Thunderbird based Eudora?

Good for them.

I glad they are starting to tackle this head on. I think thunderbird has massive potential. There are a few things missing from it though. The first thing missing is a built-in calendar. I don't think lightning+sunbird is quite there yet.

I use thunderbird exclusively for my email.

Things I'd like to see:

built-in encryption for mail stores.
ability to choose mail store format.
calendar with outlook compatibility so I can sync with my phone.
better spam filtering.
better newsreader support. (built-in encoding and decoding of popular nntp formats)
firefox/thunderbird extension installation support. (I hate having to save and load into thunderbird.)

On the server end, I'd love to see a thunderbird collaboration suite of apps for thunderbird client and and new thunderbird group email server.

My Collection of Unrelated Thoughts. . .

Is this where the Eudora code base is going to Join Thunderbird?

Perhaps it's a way for Thunderbird to stop playing second string to Firefox, and have a dedicated set of developers. That would be great, since there is so much potential if T-Bird gets developed independently.... it just seems like devs get burned out putting new code/features into Firefox, then Thunderbird is just an afterthought.

I would like to see some kind of P2P integration with E-Mail, so for example, my E-Mail program could try to deliver directly to anyone in my address book who is also logged in to the peer network at the time. No more need to storage of the mail on ISP's servers, since it is delivered directly when possible. Something like an IM Service that works like E-Mail... (ie: allows file attachments and doesn't pop up in your face all the time)

I also want the ability to use my GMail account like an IMAP account, since the E-Mail that comes into it is always stored on their server anyway. All that would initially be downloaded would be the headers and Body, anything else is only downloaded when requested. Then, when I close Thunderbird, it's not Stored on my machine, just cached for a short while and deleted at regular intervals.

Fix/Simplify PROFILES

Please please please, make the profile system much less obtrusive. It is so confusing to use, migrate, and handle these profiles in Thunderbird. It is why I don't use Thunderbird anymore. It kept breaking and was just too much hassle.

Obligatory

1. Do some stuff 2. Spin off Thunderbird 3. ??? 4. Profit!!

Sunbird as well

I hope that MailCo will take Sunbird as well. Both Thunderbird and Sunbird have huge potential married together. The Lightning project is trying to do that but Sunbird is moving slowly and Thunderbird now getting a new team behind it we may finally see the thing that we thought we would see: A new email.

I hope that they can create an open source alternative to Outlook and Exchange. Heck go for the max and replace SMTP and IMAP/POP with some new protocols. Say OMD (Open Mail Delivery) and OMBR (Open MailBox Retrieval) and create new rules around it. Think of it as Email 2.0 (seems like everything is 2.0 these days). This could be used to start from the ground up and make email even harder to spoof and address the exploits that spam use.

I hope that they give away the software and charge for the support like other open source companies. I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

"MailCo"?

That's a shame, they obviously shoulda called it Mailzilla.

A mail server should never delete mail

I find it irritating that many ISPs block suspected spam without any notification to the recipient except in fine print on the terms of use document. It's much wiser for mail servers to tag suspected spam with an easy to filter string rather than drop it completely. This way the client is sure to receive every piece of mail and can choose to open their spam box to check occasionally. If they find mail that was falsely tagged, there should be a simple "not spam" mechanism for reporting back to the server.

Imagine if the US Postal service decided what mail was rubbish and trashes one of your credit card bills because it contained the word viagra. It's not for them to decide.

Re:Marvellous

So to paraphrase, you would like standards compliant spam?