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

Tom Davies wrote:
> 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.

While it's helpful to assist with problems which are (or turn out to be) 
off-topic for LibreOffice, I don't think it's something to encourage. 
The focus for this mailing list is supporting use of LibreOffice. The 
others you mention above are specifically aimed at supporting a range of 
applications.

> How would people here feel about this mailing list offering support to
> Thunderbird users, particularly ones who use LibreOffice as their Office
> Suite?

Do Thunderbird not have their own support systems? Surely anyone looking 
for support with Thunderbird would be better off asking for help there.

I haven't closely followed how much they've been separated from Mozilla, 
but if Thunderbird have lost their own infrastructure partnering with 
LibreOffice / TDF could be a good way forward. I'd have thought would 
work better as a separate project within the organisation though, with 
separate mailing lists for LibreOffice and Thunderbird (like how there 
are separate mailing lists for the various Mozilla applications, and the 
various Apache projects each have their own mailing list). That way 
those who can only provide support for one wouldn't have to wade through 
all the posts relating to the other.

> Although Outlook includes calendar functionality (and a lot more) it seems
> that the most frequent problem that people ask about is just about emails.

For what it's worth, the Lightning extension for Thunderbird gives it 
calendar functionality as well. I use it with SeaMonkey (another Mozilla 
project combining Firefox and Thunderbird, derived from Mozilla Suite), 
though just for myself - not in a corporate environment or for inviting 
others to events, so no idea how well it works for those use cases.

> 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.

I'm not sure what you mean by Thunderbird being LibreOffice's "default" 
mail client, but I don't think it should be bundled with the LibreOffice 
installer - it would increase the download size for everyone, including 
those who don't want it or have already installed it separately. Since I 
already use SeaMonkey for mail, I have no need to download Thunderbird 
alongside LibreOffice.

Suggesting Thunderbird on LibreOffice's web site might be useful though, 
for those who are looking for something "including" a mail client. Or 
hosting their downloads there if they're in need of that.

> 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?

Linux distros by definition include a large range of applications. Are 
you going to propose bundling a web browser, image editor, media player, 
etc. with LibreOffice as well?

--
Mark.


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