Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central

[Mitchell Baker]

This is a long-ish message. It covers general topics about Thunderbird 
and the future, and also the topics of the Foundation involvement (point 
9) and the question of merging repositories (point 11).   Naturally, I 
believe it’s worth the time to read through the end.


1. Firefox and Thunderbird have lived with competing demands for some 
time now. Today Thunderbird developers spend much of their time 
responding to changes made in core Mozilla systems and technologies. At 
the same time, build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to pay a 
tax to support Thunderbird.


2. These competing demands are not good for either project. Engineers 
working on Thunderbird must focus on keeping up and adapting Firefox’s 
web-driven changes. Engineers working on Firefox and related projects 
end up considering the competing demands of Thunderbird, and/or 
wondering if and how much they should assist Thunderbird. Neither 
project can focus wholeheartedly on what is best for it.


3. These competing demands will not get better soon. Instead, they are 
very likely to get worse. Firefox and related projects are now speeding 
up the rate of change, modernizing our development process and our 
infrastructure. Indeed, this is required for Mozilla to have significant 
impact in the current computing environment.


4. There is a belief among some that living with these competing demands 
is good for the Mozilla project as a whole, because it gives us an 
additional focus, assists Thunderbird as a dedicated open source 
community, and also supports an open source standards based email 
client. This sentiment is appealing, and I share it to some extent. 
There is also a sense that caring for fellow open source developers is 
good, which I also share.  However, point 2 above — “Neither project can 
focus wholeheartedly on what is best for it” -- is the most important 
point. Having Thunderbird has an additional product and focus is *not* 
good overall if it causes all of our products — Firefox, other 
web-driven products and Thunderbird — to fall short of what we can 
accomplish.


5.  Many inside of Mozilla, including an overwhelming majority of our 
leadership, feel the need to be laser-focused on activities like Firefox 
that can have an industry-wide impact.With all due respect to 
Thunderbird and the Thunderbird community, we have been clear for years 
that we do not view Thunderbird as having this sort of potential.


6.  Given this, it’s clear to me that sooner or later paying a tax to 
support Thunderbird will not make sense as a policy for Mozilla.I 
know many believe this time came a while back, and I’ve been slow to say 
this clearly.  And of course, some feel that this time should never 
come.  However, as I say, it’s clear to me today that continuing to live 
with these competing demands given our focus on industry impact is 
increasingly unstable.  We’ve seen this already, in an unstructured way, 
as various groups inside Mozilla stop supporting Thunderbird.  The 
accelerating speed of Firefox and infrastructure changes -- which I 
welcome wholeheartedly -- will emphasize this.


7.  Some Mozillians are eager to see Mozilla support community-managed 
projects within our main development efforts.  I am also sympathetic to 
this view, with a key precondition.  Community-managed projects that 
make the main effort less nimble and likely to succeed don’t fit very 
well into this category for me.  They can still be great open source 
projects -- this is a separate question from whether the fit in our main 
development systems.  I feel so strongly about this because I am so 
concerned that “the Web” we  love is at risk.  If we want the traits of 
the Web to live and prosper in the world of mobile, social and data then 
we have to be laser-focused on this.


8.  Therefore I believe Thunderbird should would thrive best by 
separating itself from reliance on Mozilla development systems and in 
some cases, Mozilla technology. The current setting isn’t stable, and we 
should start actively looking into how we can transition in an orderly 
way to a future where Thunderbird and Firefox are un-coupled.   I don’t 
know what this will look like, or how it will work yet. I do know that 
it needs to happen, for both Firefox and Thunderbird’s sake.  This is a 
big job, and may require expertise that the Thunderbird team doesn’t yet 
have.Mozilla can provide various forms of assistance to the 
Thunderbird team via a set of the Mozilla Foundation’s capabilities.


9. Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation and I are both interested in 
helping find a way for Thunderbird to separate from Mozilla 
infrastructure. We also want to make sure that Thunderbird has the right 
kind of legal and financial home, one that will help the community 
thrive. Mark has been talking with the Thunderbird leadership about 
this, and has offered some of his time and focus and resources to 
assist. He will detail that offer in a separate mes

Re: Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central

[Mark Surman]

Hi all

As a follow on to Mitchell’s post, I want to outline more specifically 
how the Foundation got involved and the ways in which I believe the 
Foundation can assist in this situation.


Mitchell and I have had a number of discussions regarding Thunderbird. 
The Thunderbird Council has also come to each of us at various times. We 
agree it could be helpful for some of the Foundation's capabilities to 
be part of this work. Specifically, I’ve put forward an offer of 
Foundation staff time and resources to:


1. Advise and support the Council as they come up with a plan. Mitchell, 
myself and many at the Foundation care about the long term health of 
Thunderbird and feel some responsibility to help get it to a good spot.


2. Beyond time, we’ve offered the Council a modest amount of money to 
pay for contractors who can help develop options for both the 
organizational and technical future of Thunderbird.


2.1 As Mitchell said, this *does not* mean that MoFo is making technical 
decisions about Thunderbird -- just that we want to make sure the 
Council has access a technical architect, a business planner, etc. to 
generate plans and options that the community can consider together.


2.2 As part of this, we’ve also (loosely) offered MoFo's meeting 
facilitation team run by Allen Gunn to bring together a set of 
Thunderbird stakeholders to discuss these options. I haven't fully 
discussed this part with the Council yet.


3. Finally, we've offered to accept donations for Thunderbird and 
disperse funds for contractors while we're figuring out this plan.


3.1 This makes MoFo, who already owns the Thunderbird IP, into a 'fiscal 
home' for the Thunderbird community during this period. We also play 
this role for Firebug.


3.2 We’re talking to at least one org who is considering supporting 
Thunderbird. We are also looking at adding a user donation function to 
support the Thunderbird community. We will likely also supplement this 
funding with some of our own resources in a small way.


Some of the items above could be done via MoCo (items 2, 2.2) or MoFo, 
and since I have a bit of energy to focus on this now, Mitchell and I 
agreed we should take advantage of this energy. Other items make much 
more sense to be handled from the Foundation (item 3).


I'm not sure where all this leads -- but I am certain that we need to 
invest some time and resources in figuring out a good future for 
Thunderbird. That's what I've offered to help with.


If people have questions or want to somehow help out themselves, I'd be 
happy to discuss.


ms

On 2015-11-30 4:11 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
This is a long-ish message. It covers general topics about Thunderbird 
and the future, and also the topics of the Foundation involvement 
(point 9) and the question of merging repositories (point 11).   
Naturally, I believe it’s worth the time to read through the end.


1. Firefox and Thunderbird have lived with competing demands for some 
time now. Today Thunderbird developers spend much of their time 
responding to changes made in core Mozilla systems and technologies. 
At the same time, build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to 
pay a tax to support Thunderbird.


2. These competing demands are not good for either project. Engineers 
working on Thunderbird must focus on keeping up and adapting Firefox’s 
web-driven changes. Engineers working on Firefox and related projects 
end up considering the competing demands of Thunderbird, and/or 
wondering if and how much they should assist Thunderbird. Neither 
project can focus wholeheartedly on what is best for it.


3. These competing demands will not get better soon. Instead, they are 
very likely to get worse. Firefox and related projects are now 
speeding up the rate of change, modernizing our development process 
and our infrastructure. Indeed, this is required for Mozilla to have 
significant impact in the current computing environment.


4. There is a belief among some that living with these competing 
demands is good for the Mozilla project as a whole, because it gives 
us an additional focus, assists Thunderbird as a dedicated open source 
community, and also supports an open source standards based email 
client. This sentiment is appealing, and I share it to some extent. 
There is also a sense that caring for fellow open source developers is 
good, which I also share.  However, point 2 above — “Neither project 
can focus wholeheartedly on what is best for it” -- is the most 
important point. Having Thunderbird has an additional product and 
focus is *not* good overall if it causes all of our products — 
Firefox, other web-driven products and Thunderbird — to fall short of 
what we can accomplish.


5.  Many inside of Mozilla, including an overwhelming majority of our 
leadership, feel the need to be laser-focused on activities like 
Firefox that can have an industry-wide impact.With all due respect 
to Thunderbird and the Thunderbird community, we have bee

Re: Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central

[Robert Accettura]

It's not immediately clear (and maybe that's because it's truly undecided),
but is this an effort to separate Thunderbird from Mozilla entirely
(perhaps live on under Apache, someone else, or stand alone)? Or would it
be an independent project under the Mozilla Foundation, but no
infrastructure/technical ties to MoCo/Firefox with it's own financial model?

-R

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 7:43 PM, Mark Surman 
wrote:

>
> Hi all
>
> As a follow on to Mitchell’s post, I want to outline more specifically how
> the Foundation got involved and the ways in which I believe the Foundation
> can assist in this situation.
>
> Mitchell and I have had a number of discussions regarding Thunderbird. The
> Thunderbird Council has also come to each of us at various times. We agree
> it could be helpful for some of the Foundation's capabilities to be part of
> this work. Specifically, I’ve put forward an offer of Foundation staff time
> and resources to:
>
> 1. Advise and support the Council as they come up with a plan. Mitchell,
> myself and many at the Foundation care about the long term health of
> Thunderbird and feel some responsibility to help get it to a good spot.
>
> 2. Beyond time, we’ve offered the Council a modest amount of money to pay
> for contractors who can help develop options for both the organizational
> and technical future of Thunderbird.
>
> 2.1 As Mitchell said, this *does not* mean that MoFo is making technical
> decisions about Thunderbird -- just that we want to make sure the Council
> has access a technical architect, a business planner, etc. to generate
> plans and options that the community can consider together.
>
> 2.2 As part of this, we’ve also (loosely) offered MoFo's meeting
> facilitation team run by Allen Gunn to bring together a set of Thunderbird
> stakeholders to discuss these options. I haven't fully discussed this part
> with the Council yet.
>
> 3. Finally, we've offered to accept donations for Thunderbird and disperse
> funds for contractors while we're figuring out this plan.
>
> 3.1 This makes MoFo, who already owns the Thunderbird IP, into a 'fiscal
> home' for the Thunderbird community during this period. We also play this
> role for Firebug.
>
> 3.2 We’re talking to at least one org who is considering supporting
> Thunderbird. We are also looking at adding a user donation function to
> support the Thunderbird community. We will likely also supplement this
> funding with some of our own resources in a small way.
>
> Some of the items above could be done via MoCo (items 2, 2.2) or MoFo, and
> since I have a bit of energy to focus on this now, Mitchell and I agreed we
> should take advantage of this energy. Other items make much more sense to
> be handled from the Foundation (item 3).
>
> I'm not sure where all this leads -- but I am certain that we need to
> invest some time and resources in figuring out a good future for
> Thunderbird. That's what I've offered to help with.
>
> If people have questions or want to somehow help out themselves, I'd be
> happy to discuss.
>
> ms
>
>
> On 2015-11-30 4:11 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
>
>> This is a long-ish message. It covers general topics about Thunderbird
>> and the future, and also the topics of the Foundation involvement (point 9)
>> and the question of merging repositories (point 11).   Naturally, I believe
>> it’s worth the time to read through the end.
>>
>> 1. Firefox and Thunderbird have lived with competing demands for some
>> time now. Today Thunderbird developers spend much of their time responding
>> to changes made in core Mozilla systems and technologies. At the same time,
>> build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to pay a tax to support
>> Thunderbird.
>>
>> 2. These competing demands are not good for either project. Engineers
>> working on Thunderbird must focus on keeping up and adapting Firefox’s
>> web-driven changes. Engineers working on Firefox and related projects end
>> up considering the competing demands of Thunderbird, and/or wondering if
>> and how much they should assist Thunderbird. Neither project can focus
>> wholeheartedly on what is best for it.
>>
>> 3. These competing demands will not get better soon. Instead, they are
>> very likely to get worse. Firefox and related projects are now speeding up
>> the rate of change, modernizing our development process and our
>> infrastructure. Indeed, this is required for Mozilla to have significant
>> impact in the current computing environment.
>>
>> 4. There is a belief among some that living with these competing demands
>> is good for the Mozilla project as a whole, because it gives us an
>> additional focus, assists Thunderbird as a dedicated open source community,
>> and also supports an open source standards based email client. This
>> sentiment is appealing, and I share it to some extent. There is also a
>> sense that caring for fellow open source developers is good, which I also
>> share.  However, point 2 above — “Neither project can focus wholeh

Re: Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central

[Benjamin Kerensa]

I think this is rather disappointing and wish Mozilla would continue to
support Thunderbird as a Mozilla community-driven project. Thunderbird has
continued to grow[1] despite Mozilla removing paid staff from its
development and eliminating resources it had. (Actually has more users than
Firefox OS) I think there are alternatives to the current infrastructure
and build situations that are taxing that would allow Thunderbird to
continue on as a Mozilla community-led project but it seems like that is
not open for discussion.

That said, if Thunderbird is to become a separate project I do hope you and
Mark will consider giving Thunderbird a generous financial parting grant to
help it transition and continue to thrive, also ensure good protections are
in place to protect the Mozilla Thunderbird brand and trademark, and that a
good governance structure is proposed for any independent Thunderbird that
results.

[1]
https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/02/thunderbird-usage-continues-to-grow/

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Mitchell Baker 
wrote:

> This is a long-ish message. It covers general topics about Thunderbird and
> the future, and also the topics of the Foundation involvement (point 9) and
> the question of merging repositories (point 11).   Naturally, I believe
> it’s worth the time to read through the end.
>
> 1. Firefox and Thunderbird have lived with competing demands for some time
> now. Today Thunderbird developers spend much of their time responding to
> changes made in core Mozilla systems and technologies. At the same time,
> build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to pay a tax to support
> Thunderbird.
>
> 2. These competing demands are not good for either project. Engineers
> working on Thunderbird must focus on keeping up and adapting Firefox’s
> web-driven changes. Engineers working on Firefox and related projects end
> up considering the competing demands of Thunderbird, and/or wondering if
> and how much they should assist Thunderbird. Neither project can focus
> wholeheartedly on what is best for it.
>
> 3. These competing demands will not get better soon. Instead, they are
> very likely to get worse. Firefox and related projects are now speeding up
> the rate of change, modernizing our development process and our
> infrastructure. Indeed, this is required for Mozilla to have significant
> impact in the current computing environment.
>
> 4. There is a belief among some that living with these competing demands
> is good for the Mozilla project as a whole, because it gives us an
> additional focus, assists Thunderbird as a dedicated open source community,
> and also supports an open source standards based email client. This
> sentiment is appealing, and I share it to some extent. There is also a
> sense that caring for fellow open source developers is good, which I also
> share.  However, point 2 above — “Neither project can focus wholeheartedly
> on what is best for it” -- is the most important point. Having Thunderbird
> has an additional product and focus is *not* good overall if it causes all
> of our products — Firefox, other web-driven products and Thunderbird — to
> fall short of what we can accomplish.
>
> 5.  Many inside of Mozilla, including an overwhelming majority of our
> leadership, feel the need to be laser-focused on activities like Firefox
> that can have an industry-wide impact.With all due respect to
> Thunderbird and the Thunderbird community, we have been clear for years
> that we do not view Thunderbird as having this sort of potential.
>
> 6.  Given this, it’s clear to me that sooner or later paying a tax to
> support Thunderbird will not make sense as a policy for Mozilla.I know
> many believe this time came a while back, and I’ve been slow to say this
> clearly.  And of course, some feel that this time should never come.
> However, as I say, it’s clear to me today that continuing to live with
> these competing demands given our focus on industry impact is increasingly
> unstable.  We’ve seen this already, in an unstructured way, as various
> groups inside Mozilla stop supporting Thunderbird.  The accelerating speed
> of Firefox and infrastructure changes -- which I welcome wholeheartedly --
> will emphasize this.
>
> 7.  Some Mozillians are eager to see Mozilla support community-managed
> projects within our main development efforts.  I am also sympathetic to
> this view, with a key precondition.  Community-managed projects that make
> the main effort less nimble and likely to succeed don’t fit very well into
> this category for me.  They can still be great open source projects -- this
> is a separate question from whether the fit in our main development
> systems.  I feel so strongly about this because I am so concerned that “the
> Web” we  love is at risk.  If we want the traits of the Web to live and
> prosper in the world of mobile, social and data then we have to be
> laser-focused on this.
>
> 8.  Therefore I believe Thunderbird should w

Re: Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central

[Mitchell Baker]

  
  
Hi Robert
  
  Truly undecided.  Obviously there's both "mozilla-ness" and
  history with the Mozilla Foundation.  And there are some drawback
  about being part of something with the impact goals that we
  have.   It's possible that being associated with an organization
  that supports open source projects without the driving need to
  change the overall ecosystem could be better.  Either way, the
  legal and financial home can be separated and addressed as a
  separate topic.
  
  thanks for asking.
  
  Mitchell
  
  On 11/30/15 7:01 PM, Robert Accettura wrote:


  It's not immediately clear (and maybe that's
because it's truly undecided), but is this an effort to separate
Thunderbird from Mozilla entirely (perhaps live on under Apache,
someone else, or stand alone)? Or would it be an independent
project under the Mozilla Foundation, but no
infrastructure/technical ties to MoCo/Firefox with it's own
financial model?


-R
  
  
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 7:43 PM, Mark
  Surman 
  wrote:
  
Hi all

As a follow on to Mitchell’s post, I want to outline more
specifically how the Foundation got involved and the ways in
which I believe the Foundation can assist in this situation.

Mitchell and I have had a number of discussions regarding
Thunderbird. The Thunderbird Council has also come to each
of us at various times. We agree it could be helpful for
some of the Foundation's capabilities to be part of this
work. Specifically, I’ve put forward an offer of Foundation
staff time and resources to:

1. Advise and support the Council as they come up with a
plan. Mitchell, myself and many at the Foundation care about
the long term health of Thunderbird and feel some
responsibility to help get it to a good spot.

2. Beyond time, we’ve offered the Council a modest amount of
money to pay for contractors who can help develop options
for both the organizational and technical future of
Thunderbird.

2.1 As Mitchell said, this *does not* mean that MoFo is
making technical decisions about Thunderbird -- just that we
want to make sure the Council has access a technical
architect, a business planner, etc. to generate plans and
options that the community can consider together.

2.2 As part of this, we’ve also (loosely) offered MoFo's
meeting facilitation team run by Allen Gunn to bring
together a set of Thunderbird stakeholders to discuss these
options. I haven't fully discussed this part with the
Council yet.

3. Finally, we've offered to accept donations for
Thunderbird and disperse funds for contractors while we're
figuring out this plan.

3.1 This makes MoFo, who already owns the Thunderbird IP,
into a 'fiscal home' for the Thunderbird community during
this period. We also play this role for Firebug.

3.2 We’re talking to at least one org who is considering
supporting Thunderbird. We are also looking at adding a user
donation function to support the Thunderbird community. We
will likely also supplement this funding with some of our
own resources in a small way.

Some of the items above could be done via MoCo (items 2,
2.2) or MoFo, and since I have a bit of energy to focus on
this now, Mitchell and I agreed we should take advantage of
this energy. Other items make much more sense to be handled
from the Foundation (item 3).

I'm not sure where all this leads -- but I am certain that
we need to invest some time and resources in figuring out a
good future for Thunderbird. That's what I've offered to
help with.

If people have questions or want to somehow help out
themselves, I'd be happy to discuss.

ms

  

On 2015-11-30 4:11 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:

  This is a long-ish message. It covers general topics
  about Thunderbird and the future, and also the topics
  of the Foundation involvement (point 9) and the
  question of merging repositories (point 11). 
   Naturally, I believe it’s worth the tim

Re: Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central

[Mitchell Baker]

  
  
Hi Benjamin
  
  And yes, we want to see a good setting.  Both Mark and i are among
  the dedicated Thunderbird user group, and I use Thunderbird to
  organize vast parts of my life.   When I say that Thunderbird and
  Firefox must disentangle, it's not because I don't value
  Thunderbird.  I value it both as an open source project and
  because i personally rely on Thunderbird to be productive.
  
  There is currently a community driven governance structure,
  through the Thunderbird Council.   We'll be working with the
  Council.
  
  Mitchell
  
  On 11/30/15 7:45 PM, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:


  
I think this is rather disappointing and wish Mozilla would continue to support Thunderbird as a Mozilla community-driven project. Thunderbird has continued to grow[1] despite Mozilla removing paid staff from its development and eliminating resources it had. (Actually has more users than Firefox OS) I think there are alternatives to the current infrastructure and build situations that are taxing that would allow Thunderbird to continue on as a Mozilla community-led project but it seems like that is not open for discussion.

That said, if Thunderbird is to become a separate project I do hope you and Mark will consider giving Thunderbird a generous financial parting grant to help it transition and continue to thrive, also ensure good protections are in place to protect the Mozilla Thunderbird brand and trademark, and that a good governance structure is proposed for any independent Thunderbird that results.

  
  [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/02/thunderbird-usage-continues-to-grow/

  On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:11 PM,
Mitchell Baker 
wrote:
This
  is a long-ish message. It covers general topics about
  Thunderbird and the future, and also the topics of the
  Foundation involvement (point 9) and the question of
  merging repositories (point 11).   Naturally, I believe
  it’s worth the time to read through the end.
  
  1. Firefox and Thunderbird have lived with competing
  demands for some time now. Today Thunderbird developers
  spend much of their time responding to changes made in
  core Mozilla systems and technologies. At the same time,
  build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to pay a
  tax to support Thunderbird.
  
  2. These competing demands are not good for either
  project. Engineers working on Thunderbird must focus on
  keeping up and adapting Firefox’s web-driven changes.
  Engineers working on Firefox and related projects end up
  considering the competing demands of Thunderbird, and/or
  wondering if and how much they should assist Thunderbird.
  Neither project can focus wholeheartedly on what is best
  for it.
  
  3. These competing demands will not get better soon.
  Instead, they are very likely to get worse. Firefox and
  related projects are now speeding up the rate of change,
  modernizing our development process and our
  infrastructure. Indeed, this is required for Mozilla to
  have significant impact in the current computing
  environment.
  
  4. There is a belief among some that living with these
  competing demands is good for the Mozilla project as a
  whole, because it gives us an additional focus, assists
  Thunderbird as a dedicated open source community, and also
  supports an open source standards based email client. This
  sentiment is appealing, and I share it to some extent.
  There is also a sense that caring for fellow open source
  developers is good, which I also share.  However, point 2
  above — “Neither project can focus wholeheartedly on what
  is best for it” -- is the most important point. Having
  Thunderbird has an additional product and focus is *not*
  good overall if it causes all of our products — Firefox,
  other web-driven products and Thunderbird — to fall short
  of what we can accomplish.
  
  5.  Many inside of Mozilla, including an overwhelming
  majority of our leadership, feel the need to be
  laser-focused on activities like Firefox that can have an
  industry-wide impact.    With all due respect to
  Thunderbird and the Thunderbird community, we have been
  clear for years that we do not view Thunderbird as having
  this sort of potenti