MailNews Talk:Future of Mail

Hello Mitchel,

thanks for this initiative, I think I have two good ideas to the development, the thunderbird development team and the organizational structure.

Maybe Thunderbird has not such a usersbase and development features and money resources to stay in that shape as it is.

But I would not through away the baby with the bath tub, as we say here.

First, making a new organization/foundation is too much work and takes time. So I suggest to give Thunderbird just one year more in the mozilla organization and then make it either a cild company or a sf.net community project.

After that year, do not miss to ask the developers and coders about their interest, in which environment they want to work.

Please, let Thunderbird for one year in this organizational structure as it is. And we can develop the following ideas.

1. Thunderbird is a very good mail client. It is in one step mass-ready: But, Outlook is still better, because it has a calendar. So just add to Thunderbird a calendar function to get reminders for emails to reciepients with a bithday. So instead of outsourcing Thunderbird, merge Thunderbird, with Sunbird. Both are birds, you know? http://sourceforge.net/projects/portablesbird/

2. And this is the new idea of email: 80 % of email we do to trusted friends. And we do less email, because we are on Instant Messengers. So we need like in Google Mail the option for both: sending an email message or - if online - an Instant Message. There is a new serverless Instant Messenger out. this is this project

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=618174

It is open for client and protocol, for all posix available, at the moment with QT/FLTK gui.

The main principle is, that all communication is done ONLY to friends, which were defined before with a symmetric key exchange. This means, communication is safe and encrypted.

This has the side effect, that no one can message and email me - besides the definded trusted friends.

Retroshare Messenger is both: an email client and an serverless Instant Messenger.

So... sending serverless Email is definately a feature, how mail is in future organized. The same for Instant Messaging. The Instant Messenger market is one with very high interest, see Google Talk or the merge of AOL-ICQ and MSN-Yahoo and all the Multimessengers.

The idea is now: to implement RetroShare serverless Email and serverless Instant Messenger into Thunderbird.

This should be scheduled for one year of work within the Mozilla Foundation (just a gui integration) and then we release some betas of Thunderbird with Retroshare Instant Messenger and serverless Mail and ideally with Sunbird Calendar. The official Release is then a full integration of RetroShare serverless protocol for serverless Email and Instant Message and the Sunbird.

3. Thunderbird is used not so much, because it is not bundled into the Firefox Installer. One Comment said, that the Mozialla Foundation should then use the name Firefox Foundation. But instead of your initiative, I would recommend to a) give Thunderbird one year merging with Retroshare and b) going a little bit back to the roots: Mozilla Foundation was Netscape? So Mail and Surf. And if the we get Thunderbird with Firefox bundled to ONE Suite, then we would not have these problems. Really, I am really surprised about the suggestion to outsource Thunderbird, if it was Sunbird, ok, but Thunderbird? Even Netscape said, that the acutal version is only browser. But a few days later they said an email client will be not excluded for the future!!!

My suggestion is:

1. Integrate Sunbird in Thunderbird 2. Integrate Retroshare in Thunderbird 3. Bundle it to the Firefox Installer.

Then after one year of development, decide new and see, how the product is used or not.

And last: If there is a new organization needed for Thunderbird in one year, this is definately the OpenOffice.org community, as they play around with a calendar and as well with an Instant Messenger.

• IF* Thunderbird MUST be outsourced now, then make a new joint-venture-company with OpenOffice, for a Product, which has Email (Thunerbird) Serverless Email and IM (Retroshare) and third a calendar (Sunbird) integrated.

But it is a mistake to do it isolated outsourced (merged in a joint venture or not), this is why I suggest to have a very HIGH DEVELOPMENT for the next six months, to get the first version of Thunderbird 2.7.9.9 launched this year, with Sunbird and Retroshare implemented in the gui. The beta should be this year released.

Then in 2008 we get first official Version of 2.8.0.0

I think this would be a good vision to email: a serverless email and message communication done with the retroshare protocol in the Thunderbird.

Besided it would have good synergies to have the option to mail to friend over Retroshare (no spam, confidential mail, sending of documents... etc) and second you can use for Mails to public Mailadresses (with @ in a mailadress) the Thunderbird. Thunderbird would get an Instant Messenger as well.

Last idea: Retroshare is discussion to add the www.sim-im.org Multimessenger as a Patch to retroshare, or other way round, SIM will integrate Retroshare.... this both added to Thunderbird would be like a Multimessenger we need. - serbased Mail Message (Thunderbird) - serverless Mail Message (Retroshare) - Serveless Instant Message (Retroshare) - Serverbased Multimessenger (SIM-im.org with AOl, MSN YAHO ICQ JABBER) - Calender Function like in Outlook (Sunbird).

This should be the plans for thunderbird in the next months.. a lot of stuff to do, maybe you can discuss it with the small development team and get a few coders as well from firefox.

Remember: The main goal is to get an Installer ready, which is Bundling Firefox with the Message Tool.

Reading Information is only the half of the medaillon, the other half is to discuss them onlin ewith friends.

Incoming Information (Reading web, Firefox) and outgoing information (Email, Thunderbird) are 2 ways of communications, which are essential for human beings.

So please do not make mistakes! Give Thunderbird a Push with a serverless Instant Messenger.

Thanks!

make webmail not suck

I'm aware that Thunderbird and Firefox have a lot of code in common. AFAICT, Thunderbird is 90% JavaScript/XUL/CSS etc--stuff which could be served over HTTP such that from your web browser you could almost have a Thunderbird UI as a webmail app. And it's up to the server admin to keep it up-to-date, configure it for his mail service etc..

The (XPCOM, I think) bits that are missing could possibly be offered to the Firefox client as an XPI file, or maybe if they're small enough (given that, I think, none of it is UI so no i18n concerns etc) bundled into Firefox itself.

Or maybe something new needs to be invented for this crazy idea to work. I don't see an obvious way for things like drag-n-drop attachments to work. But I thought I'd mention it as I'm old enough (unlike my student users) to think Thunderbird is far, far better than SquirrelMail.

--Mb 14:39, 25 July 2007 (PDT)

Next generation thunderbird

Hi there,

Some ideas for the next generation of email. The general tagline for the strategy is "Easy to use information & communication hub".

My idea is simple: we all check email every so often, so why not group everything that needs checking into the application,and add value to email messages via automatic classification, tagging, linking and so on. Let mail messages be more than text in folders!

It's based on four general directions:

1) A much more usable/intuitive GUI. Think Apple.

2) Making it more like MS Outlook: Adding calendering, To Do lists and making Thunderbird a hub for information management

3) Improving searching, tagging, cross-referencing...etc. Revisit the "intertwingle" principle from jwz.

4) Strong integration with everything else: Firefox, The Windows/Linux Desktop. Web sites & other webmail clients. If it adds value it could be either integrated or have a plug-in.

I'm currently sketching some of my ideas regarding a proposed GUI and detailed features in each of those directions. I'll try to post mock up screenshots in the coming days.

~~Mohamed Samy