Re: [libreoffice-users] Thunderbird potential as the official/default email-client for LO? Re: [board-discuss] BoD decision from 2015-10-05

I think bringing Thunderbird fully under the umbrella of The Document
Foundation, and as a sister project of LibreOffice, is a fantastic idea,
it just makes the most sense to me as a formal and permanent home for
Thunderbird going forward.

The fact is, in spite of the fact that Thunderbird development has
actually improved dramatically ever since Mozilla 'killed it' thanks
*only* to the fantastic volunteers who stepped up, its long term future
is in jeopardy right now.

I would dearly love to see Thunderbird adopted, providing it the legal
infrastructure and resources it will need if it is to remain viable.

As both a long time Thunderbird user, since well before it reached
version 1.0, and supporting our 60+ Thunderbird users at our office this
entire time, I would be happy to provide assistance on this list. Not to
brag, but there are very few Thunderbird issues that I couldn't either
solve, or at least point you to the bug # covering the bug. And since
Lightning is now a bundled Addon, people have to explicitly 'opt out' of
Calendar functionality, so the fact that TB has a calendar is now much
more 'discoverable' for new users.

Anyway, I hope something comes of this...

Charles

On 2/26/2016 8:15 AM, Tom Davies <tomcecf@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi :)
> How do people here feel about approaching the Thunderbird people to bring
> them into the LibreOffice project a bit more?  Perhaps they could become
> the official default email client?
>
> As most of you know - many organisations, particularly OpenSource ones,
> have departments/sections/sub-groups that focus on supporting external
> projects that are used within their own project.  For example Ubuntu,
> Redhat, openSuSE, Mageia, Fedora (and so on) each have people able to help
> their users deal with most issues to do with Thunderbird, LibreOffice and
> many other apps.  Typically such people can handle quite a lot of issues
> but sometimes seek help from 'upstream' (such as to here if it's a
> LibreOffice issue) or/and invite the user to take their issue upstream
> themselves. Many of such people stay within one OS and help with many apps
> within that OS but some support the same app in many different OSes.  There
> are even generic forums, such as "LinuxQuestions.org" that handle a lot of
> different OSes.
>
> This mailing list has helped quite a few people with "off topic" issues,
> such as helping with other apps or choosing a good "gateway" distro (such
> as Mint, Ubuntu etc) for people who want to break free of Windows or even
> helping with quite detailed "off topic" issues in very geeky Gnu&Linux OSes
> (such as Slackware).  Also there's a good chance that some people from
> Thunderbird might start offering weeu's support through our support
> systems, such as this mailing list - if we were welcoming and supportive.
>
> How would people here feel about this mailing list offering support to
> Thunderbird users, particularly ones who use LibreOffice as their Office
> Suite?
>
> Another option might be for "The Document Foundation" to fully take on the
> whole of the Thunderbird project, and bring in all of their infrastructure
> and maybe kinda merge parts together where it's easy enough to do so.
>
> Personally i prefer this sort of approach  The Mozilla Foundation chose to
> split TB away from their web-browser (a good linuxy thing to do) so they
> could be more independent and therefore be used by people who use a wide
> range of other web-browsers - also helping those few Firefox users who were
> using something else to benefit more from a more streamlined Firefox.  A
> few years ago Mozilla decided to drop almost all it's support for TBeaving
> it all to just volunteers.  The TB volunteers have done a fantastic job but
> it would be great to give them a new home so they can "spread their wings"
> a lot more.
>
> To me it seems that either way, or something similar would greatly benefit
> both (or even all 3!) separate projects.
>
> It at long last would solve the main perceived 'blocker' that many people
> seem to struggle with when trying to move away from MS Office = that LO
> doesn't have a drop-in replacement for Outlook.
>
> Although Outlook includes calendar functionality (and a lot more) it seems
> that the most frequent problem that people ask about is just about emails.
> On this mailing list it's even been suggested the TDF create a new email
> client, but i think most of us already use TB anyway and it's probably
> better to just use something that has a good, well-proven track-record
> rather than try to cobble something together from scratch.
>
> Some of us inevitably try to point out that there are many other choices of
> email client to suit particular niche-markets - such as Claws (for a much
> smaller foot-print and thus faster on lower-spec machines) or Evolution
> (for a totally complete "drop in replacement" for Outlook in terms of
> look&feel (but has limited support and is not cross-platform, and can't
> even cope outside the Gnome DE so it limits which versions of Gnu&Linux it
> can be used on)) and some really fancy ones with more project-management
> functionality.
>
> Such alternatives would still be available and supported but by having TB
> as our default it would dissolve one more perceived 'blocker' . People
> would no longer be forced into doing a tonne more research into which email
> client to choose, and TB would be the perfect one for the vast majority of
> them.
>
> Microsoft and Apple seem to be successful largely because they remove
> people's options and give them "Freedom FROM choice".  The tech industry
> seems to value that above almost anything else.  As soon as there are
> choices they start grumbling about "fragmentation", and that it's difficult
> to choose "which is best" because different use-cases may have different
> requirements and therefore may need  make slightly different choices.  In
> every other industry monopolies are seen as bad - choice and diversity are
> applauded as being "good competition" allowing "market forces" to help
> drive innovation, efficiency and all that sort of thing.
>
> In the Gnu&Linux world we fight hard to make sure there is "Freedom OF
> choice", but a lot of people struggle when given options - they just want
> to settle with what they are given and then grumble about it!
>
> Giving people a default and then allowing them to easily replace it as been
> hugely successful for "gateway distros" and i think it would probably be
> great for us too.  How do other people here feel?
>
> Also, just out of curiosity, do we happen to already have people here who
> help other people with Thunderbird issues in another forum or support
> network?  We probably do already have some with some level of expertise on
> this mailing list, or at least people who can quickly learn how to resolve
> the most frequently asked issues.
> Many regards from
> Tom :)
> On 26 Feb 2016 10:25, "Florian Effenberger" <floeff@documentfoundation.org>
> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> the following decision was taken on October 5, 2015 in private as the board
> saw a need for confidentiality.
>
> It is now made public in accordance with our statutes.
>
> Proposal: Authorize Simon Phipps to explore Thunderbird options with Mozilla
>
> The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders
> without deputies. In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 of the
> Board of Directors members, which gives 4.
>
> A total of 5 Board of Directors members have participated in the
> vote. The vote is quorate.
>
> A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 3 votes.
>
> Result of vote: 5 approvals, 0 neutral, 0 disapprovals.
> Decision: The request has been accepted.
>
> This message is to be archived by the BoD members and their deputies.
>
> Florian


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