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Communications Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Creates New Internet Mail and Communications Company 135

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the tackle-spam-along-the-way dept.
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.
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Mozilla Creates New Internet Mail and Communications Company More

Mozilla Creates New Internet Mail and Communications Company

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  • Profit? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eponymous Bastard ( 1143615 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:43AM (#20653365)
    will be a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit.

    Quick! When's the IPO?!?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1. Create New Internet Mail and Communications Company
      2. ???
      3. Don't profit much!

  • Before anyone hates (Score:5, Informative)

    by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:43AM (#20653381)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Fayn ( 1003629 )
      This is especially true if you intend to start up as soon as possible. And, of course, for-profit > non-profit when it comes to making some return on your investment.

    • What madness is this?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:57AM (#20653673) Journal
      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.
    • As someone who has worked in and run nonprofits for 20 years. there are only two real differences in for profit and non profit business models. the first one being what very short tax form nonprofits fill out each quarter (it took less then 30mins each Qt). But more importantly nonprofits dont have shareholders with the ability bankrupt the company for personal gain.
      • Also for-profits have more flexibility in fund raising and how that money is spent. IIRC non-profits have some relatively strict rules about how and when they spend their money. That's why MoFo started MoCo to begin with, they had greater financial flexibility.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jsfetzik ( 40515 )
          While this is sort of true in that a not for profit has to actually make an effort to put there resources towards the goal stated in their charter. A for profit corporation can blow all there money on Pocky and Jolt I suppose.

          It's not so much limits on how you raise money or what you can spend it on. It's more a case of accountability and visibility. In the case of most not for profit corporations your books are more open to the public, although it make take some hoop jumping to get a look at them. For prof

    • 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.

      You should have been modded -5 Bullshitter who doesn't know what he is talking about. Bureaucracy comes from within the organization, not from whether it is for profit, non profit, or not for profit. The latter two require a bit more paperwork - but the amount of paperwork is i

  • 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! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FuzzyDaddy ( 584528 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:54AM (#20653597) Journal
      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!

      • Thunderbird's current spam filtering sucks.

        I've always wondered why Thunderbird couldn't figure out that messages with both Viagra and Cialis in the subject line are SPAM.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by j-pimp ( 177072 )

          Thunderbird's current spam filtering sucks.

          I've always wondered why Thunderbird couldn't figure out that messages with both Viagra and Cialis in the subject line are SPAM.

          As I always tell people, what If I am emailing my doctor about Viagra.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Then you probably wouldn't refer to it as v1agr8 and your wouldn't be worried about your pepper not staining up.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Xtravar ( 725372 )

            As I always tell people, what If I am emailing my doctor about Viagra.

            Then you should obviously spell it "v1agra" to avoid the filter, duh.

            On a more serious note, doctors shouldn't communicate medical information via email since it's insecure and patient information is confidential. I think there are probably rules about that... I message my doctor (not about viagra) through my HMO's website, which coincidentally utilizes the electronic health record software my company makes.

          • As I always tell people, what If I am emailing my doctor about Viagra.

            Well, you could be, but then your doctor needs to set his software up so that he allows incoming mail on that topic.

            It just feels like there's an over-emphasis on an elegant learning algorithm (which doesn't seem to work) when something simple that knocked out mail based on what we know SPAM to look like.
      • The client isn't the right place to do this.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Aye, source and destination client encrypts, with a special passphrase entry in the mail details?

      Ex: I give you my email address in a file with
      1) My email address
      2) The encryption key
      3) My passphrase *for you*

      Now, when I recieve an email, I decrypt it, if the passphrase and email match my personal database, it's flagged as good, otherwise it is treated as spam.

      Something like that?
    • I use it all the time. Even multiple levels of it.

      I can GPG encrypt my message.

      The server can use TLS when connecting to the other server.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kwerle ( 39371 )
        And you can also add the the list: piglatin, rot13.

        But none of that is BUILT IN from the ground up. It's all tacked on - sometimes.

        And that makes all the difference.
        • You want it modular so that you can upgrade it or swap it out when a flaw is discovered in it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kwerle ( 39371 )
            Nope.

            You want it built in so that when a flaw is found, the subsystem is replaced and everyone upgrades. And those that don't are left behind. Just like 99.99% of current email users whose current bolted on choice is no encryption, but instead it would be a relatively small number.

            It's not like encryption is new or difficult to implement (and thus likely to be found flawed). It just isn't used because it isn't part of the spec.

            • Just like 99.99% of current email users whose current bolted on choice is no encryption, but instead it would be a relatively small number.

              There is nothing "bolted on" regarding encryption right now.

              It is simple to add it. Very simple. And just as simple to change it.

              You want it built in so that when a flaw is found, the subsystem is replaced and everyone upgrades. And those that don't are left behind.

              You're contradicting yourself. If it is "everyone" then there is no one who is "left behind".

              And that is th

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by kwerle ( 39371 )
                There is nothing "bolted on" regarding encryption right now.

                Encryption is not standard.

                It is simple to add it.

                Bolt it on. It isn't hard. Very few do.

                You're contradicting yourself. If it is "everyone" then there is no one who is "left behind".

                "everyone" is being used as a euphemism. If you don't upgrade, and neither do your 3 friends, and you only email each other, you are left behind but can still use your software.

                And that is the problem with your plan. It depends upon everyone doing something when the

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 )
      If they want to make money the should spam and sell privacy info.

      That seems to make more money these days. And as the lead developers of the mail program, they should have an easy time bypassing any anti-spam filters built in, and include a root kit to mine for more valuable personal information.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

      If they want to make money, they should fix spam and privacy.

      Well, sure, and cure cancer and solve the halting problem while you're at it.

      Bluntly, there is no simple correct fix for either of those, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or misinformed.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Sczi ( 1030288 )
        I wonder would it be possible to make it much more difficult to spoof the from headers in email? If spam could at least be traced back it would act as a deterrent or make it easier to shut down open relays. Right now it's just too easy to put any old crap in the from line.
    • I think you have a decent point, which is that the whole "e-mail problem" is not solved. If you don't know what I mean by that, I mean that if e-mail was a solved problem, then there wouldn't really be anything for a new company to do except tweak performance and use better marketing. However, there are real improvements still to be made in terms of features, sorting, archiving, aggregation, etc. Spam protection might be something that we deal with forever. Encryption still has problems that have to be

  • Lost Cause (Score:5, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:54AM (#20653593)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by allthefish ( 1158249 )
      I disagree, email is still the dominant form of communication online. Although instant messaging and facebook are creeping up, especially amongst youth, the VAST majority of people still use email. Although some integration with Facebook would be pretty cool, Facebook itself is a fad. In 10 years, will it still be as popular as it is today? Just consider the examples set by Xanga, MySpace, and the rest that have fallen or are falling by the wayside. Email, however, will be around for a long time, and an i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ctrl-Z ( 28806 )
        Ever heard of sarcasm?
      • More importantly just about every office uses email for internal communication. It's currently the best well to tell everyone in a large group about some minor change in the office.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Ajehals ( 947354 )

          It's currently the best well to tell everyone in a large group about some minor change in the office.

          No. The best way to communicate a change to an office is clearly to hold a meeting that includes all the stakeholders, all those directly effected by the change and anyone who may at some time be directly or indirectly impacted by the change, Preferably the meeting should be held off site. Email is for inviting people to that meeting (preferably by sending 3 or four emails and an .ical with the date listed.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Rich0 ( 548339 )
            Don't forget to send reminder emails 2 weeks in advance, 1 week in advance, day of, 5 minutes before, and 10 minutes into the meeting when attendance is low.

            It isn't like that functionality would be better implemented in a calendar application or anything like that...

      • I disagree, email is still the dominant form of communication online.
        If you carefully re-read the post you replied to you will discover that, contrary to your claims, you are agreeing.
         

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        I actually don't have a problem with instant messaging. For example, my company uses our own IM product exclusively, because we are distributed all around the globe and many of us telecommute. Without IM, we'd be in a lot of pain. And for the world in general, IM is a different method of communication, rather than a version supplanting an already existing similar method. There's email, IM and telephone. But MySpace and similar "services" do nothing but erode these "big three".

        It's sad that after decades of

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by turbidostato ( 878842 )
          "For these reasons, I hate social networks with a passion."

          This, of course, being said on an HTTP-based site that adds absolute nothing to the NNTP protocol and paradigm it predates.
    • "so you can keep in touch with said idiot who refuses to use email"

      I just find those people and shank them in a dark alley. Problem is that there are so many idiots and not enough dark alleys..
    • > From everything I keep hearing in the news, nobody uses email anymore.

      You speak in jest (I think), but I increasingly try not to use email for anything I care about. I find XMPP (Jabber) to be much more convenient, and what with Google Talk, anybody can interface with it easily.

    • start writing Facebook and MySpace email clients

      Not the worst idea to have ever been spouted off on Slashdot. Email clients have already integrated RSS and Newsgroups. Gmail treats Chat transcripts almost identically to email. Might as well make use of Facebook API and integrate Facebook messaging into the email client as well.

      Eventually we'll progress beyond seeing the app as strictly email, but more as a general purpose messaging app, providing a storage mechanism and transmission mechanism for a

  • Don't let code rot by "employees" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:56AM (#20653645) Homepage Journal

    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. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @11:26AM (#20654277)
      #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?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by yuna49 ( 905461 )
        Principal/agent support

        Many businesspeople don't schedule their own meetings, handle their messages, etc. A messaging system that doesn't include support for agents is a non-starter in many businesses.

        • Scenario:
          My user account is linked to the role account of postmaster.

          I go on vacation. I use principal/agent to assign LIMITED rights to my user account to someone else while I'm out. That also, by default, allows them access to postmaster through my account. That way I don't have to dig through a bunch of roles and accounts and then remember to take them back later.

          But include switches so that I can limit/deny that if I really want to. Or assign it to someone else. But the default should be the easiest.

          • Default colours for verified email. (Score:4, Insightful)

            by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @12:14PM (#20655359)
            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.

            • There's something I like about your idea. Most attempts at solving our spam problems in some permanent way include having "trusted" servers. One of the problems with this is that, either you have to make it so easy to become "trusted" that spammers will be able to achieve that status, or else lots of people won't be able to get a "trusted" status. If lots of people don't get "trusted" status, then lots of legitimate e-mail will get filtered out.

              However, I do like the idea of having a sort of "trusted" s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Trixter ( 9555 )
        #4 is already in Thunderbird; you should read the docs.
  • ... 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....
    • Citadel (or, Citadel/UX specifically, see citadel.org homepage) might be worth looking at as an integrated mail/calendar system. It is already integrated and very simple to install and maintain.

      If you are old enough to remember the heady days of BBSes in the 1980s, yes this is the same Citadel that you remember running many popular BBSes of the day (well one of them anyways--there were many clones and forks. The present Citadel originated in the mid 1980s as a port/rewrite of the original Citadel system w

  • Just give me.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HerculesMO ( 693085 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:57AM (#20653679)
    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.
  • 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?
    • I RTFA, and it does seem like taking on M$ Exchange is a possibility in the future. Remember, none of this has actually be done yet, so anyone saying they know how its going to turn out is merely speculating.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by bsod_vista ( 944674 )
      You mean like this [zimbra.com] or this [open-xchange.com] or even this [sun.com]?

    • 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?
      Perhaps this one [slashdot.org] -- seems to have a server component which does what Exchange would do.
       

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mrmagos ( 783752 )
      Zimbra and OpenXchange to name a couple. I looked into this a couple of years ago, and there were about a half a dozen or so at the time, each with varying degrees of success of duplicating Exchange's features. Looks like Zimbra is the current leader, and now that they're under new ownership [slashdot.org] with more capital, hopefully they'll continue to get better.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by yuna49 ( 905461 )
        I thought Zimbra had a lot to offer, but I didn't like how the component software was frozen in place. You ended up with their copies of Postfix, Cyrus, etc., which stood outside the package management system that handles the rest of the machine. I'd have preferred that they built their customizations on top of stock versions of the components that you could update with yum or apt along with everything else in the machine.

        Perhaps this situation has changed? I haven't looked into it recently.

        Also the earl
        • Still packaged like that but you could go and change it. It just makes their testing etc easier. I've found it works just fine now A lot of the reason for slowness in older versions was the spam handling etc - they've improved th configuration and it works pretty smoothly now.
    • There's no need to compete with Exchange... why fight the 700 pound gorilla in its own cage? You're going to get threaded through the bars and tied in a knot. Make a client that businesses can support out of the box - no matter what current email system they're using.

      Here's my wishlist....

      For starters: Mozilla needs to create a good client that interfaces with Outlook Web Access (like Evolution on Linux, but better), webmail providers like Gmail and Yahoo, and does all the various secured and unsecured flav

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bpfinn ( 557273 )
      I believe Scalix [scalix.com] was designed to do just that.

      Brian
    • There are many, two of which just mentioned on /. today:

      http://www.zimbra.com/ [zimbra.com]
      http://www.bongo-project.org/ [bongo-project.org]
      http://freshmeat.net/projects/desknow/ [freshmeat.net]
      http://www.google.com/a [google.com]

      The list goes on and on.
  • it wont hurt to have more customer-oriented, people-targeting companies on the web
  • ...will be a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit.

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

  • 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!"

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rhapsody Scarlet ( 1139063 )

      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?
      So they can make money from business dealings and funnel that money into the Mozilla Foundation to further the development of the products they sell. It's exactly what the Mozilla Corporation has been doing for a while now.
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by dascritch ( 808772 )
      And gazillions of lines of code from Mozilla, from Eudora, perhaps from MiliMail etc.... That's a lot of leverage !

  • 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 (Score:4, Informative)

    by dreemernj ( 859414 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @11:47AM (#20654783) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • "a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit."
    ZOMG a golden opportunity! Let me call my broker...
  • 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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @12:34PM (#20655777) Homepage
    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).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by myz24 ( 256948 )
      I think you're mostly right. Outlook 2007 with Microsoft's search added on does work very well, far better than it ever did before. Outlook's spam filtering is still a joke, I can't believe they haven't included something better yet.
  • 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 Fir
  • 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...)
  • is this going to kill the new Thunderbird based Eudora?
  • 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
  • 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 deli
  • 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.
  • 1. Do some stuff 2. Spin off Thunderbird 3. ??? 4. Profit!!
  • 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 MailBo
  • That's a shame, they obviously shoulda called it Mailzilla.
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dodobh ( 65811 )
      ISPs need to reject spam, not delete it (or tag it). Users make more mistakes when filtering manually, and it's a lot more expensive to accept all that email, parse it and tag it.

      And if you have a spam folder with your ISP, then the ISP needs to ensure you check your email regularly there, and/or waste storage space keeping spam.

      Hardware is cheap, good hardware is still expensive, and the people needed to run large mail farms are even more expensive.

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