Thunderbird and Mozilla

[Ezh]

Last year there was a message, that TB will move to an external community. Is there a change happened? Will Tb still part of Mozilla?

[Mouse5]

Last year there was a message, that TB will move to an external community. Is there a change happened? Will Tb still part of Mozilla?

im more concerned at what will happen to TB after TB52 is released. will it be using Servo the same as Firefox will eventually be doing? i dont think anyone can answer that ATM

[DanRaisch]

See this article -- http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 9&t=366405

[tanstaafl]

It became a community lead project, with all maintenance and development done by the community, several years ago. Things are going slow on Thunderbird becoming independent of Mozilla, but progressing. Development is managed by the Thunderbird Council, which is getting ready to hold another election soon. They changed their mind and didn't hire an architect (short term consulting contract) to help them plan the future because they decided that too much of that consulting was based on the assumption of a total rewrite, which they no longer think is a viable choice. Instead the money was spent on helping to deal with infrastructure issues. They have hired their first staff member (half-time) to maintain the code repositories, investigate/solve security and regression issues, review patches and if time permits implement additional bug fixes and help refactor the code.

Last I read in the Thunderbird planning mailing list they didn't think it was worth adding multiple process support for a good while, and that a lot of work would be needed in Lightning before they could consider that. To avoid being forced to eventually fork Gecko (which is viewed as something that would kill Thunderbird) they're trying to actively move away from compiling Thunderbird as a binary variant of Firefox. They're still discussing the details of how to do that.

I'm hoping that after the election they will pick up the pace on deciding on a new legal home and have a more detailed plan on what to do about Gecko.

[Ezh]

Tnx!

[Mouse5]

It became a community lead project, with all maintenance and development done by the community, several years ago. Things are going slow on Thunderbird becoming independent of Mozilla, but progressing. Development is managed by the Thunderbird Council, which is getting ready to hold another election soon. They changed their mind and didn't hire an architect (short term consulting contract) to help them plan the future because they decided that too much of that consulting was based on the assumption of a total rewrite, which they no longer think is a viable choice. Instead the money was spent on helping to deal with infrastructure issues. They have hired their first staff member (half-time) to maintain the code repositories, investigate/solve security and regression issues, review patches and if time permits implement additional bug fixes and help refactor the code.

Last I read in the Thunderbird planning mailing list they didn't think it was worth adding multiple process support for a good while, and that a lot of work would be needed in Lightning before they could consider that. To avoid being forced to eventually fork Gecko (which is viewed as something that would kill Thunderbird) they're trying to actively move away from compiling Thunderbird as a binary variant of Firefox. They're still discussing the details of how to do that.

I'm hoping that after the election they will pick up the pace on deciding on a new legal home and have a more detailed plan on what to do about Gecko.

i tend to think we'll find out more about that after the TB52 release

[rsx11m]

trying to actively move away from compiling Thunderbird as a binary variant of Firefox

Hmmm, since when is Thunderbird a binary variant of Firefox? It's based on the same rendering engine, that would be Gecko. Other than that, it's not Firefox at all. Also, I wouldn't claim that staying on Gecko "would kill Thunderbird" as you say, under the assumption that there might be enough interest to continue Gecko as a platform at least on the 52 level (i.e., before Mozilla rips out full theming and XUL-addon support) in the future as a community effort. SeaMonkey is not likely to go down the Servo/Rust/whatever route, and then there is also Palemoon (which raises red flags here, but needs to be mentioned as a major driving force anyway, though Goanna continues to depart from what Gecko is today) to continue a Gecko-derived path. So, staying on Gecko may simply imply saying goodbye to Mozilla for good. The main question is if there will be - in the sum of all - enough manpower and knowledge to maintain such an endeavor to keep these applications alive and retain their own identities.

[tanstaafl]

"binary variant" is the phrasing first used by Ben Busch in "If we believe what the Firefox folks are saying, then it is going to be increasingly difficult to follow on our current path of compiling Thunderbird as a variant of Firefox. At some point in the future, forking will be our only choice. Since that is not a choice that we want to be forced to make, then we need to be actively moving away from compiling as a binary variant of Firefox." I think he meant it figuratively, not literally.

There was a lot of discussion about being forced to fork or die when XUL/XBL/XPCOM is gone. magnus melin stated: "Like aleth wrote, there have been no announcements about removing XUL/XBL. XUL is deprecated, meaning Mozilla will not put any effort on moving if forwards (patches NOT accepted!). XUL in add-ons is going away for Firefox Add-ons, but will live on in Firefox/Thunderbird core for who knows how long. Removal is only a long term goal, so I would not be surprised if it's still used 10 years from now, but these things are hard to predict.

XPCOM is not deprecated, and the implications would be massive. It would happen way in the future if ever. So, removal is not imminent but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of rewriting into web technologies that should happen as soon as possible, since that is not such a moving target, pool of contributors is potentially huge and there would eventually be a possibility of a version for mobile."

[rsx11m]

Even if XUL/XBL and XPCOM as such can stick around, support for XUL add-ons is scheduled to be removed with Gecko 57, and removal of complete theming is on the plate for a while now as well. Not so much affecting Thunderbird, but NPAPI plugins other than Flash will be disallowed with 52+ retail (still allowed in 52 ESR). The Mozilla devs were quickly to open bugs for removal of "plugin-specific code" (i.e., work-arounds or fixes for specific plugins), many of which have landed in the 53 cycle already. So, it will be interesting to see what's left in terms of extension/add-on support for the 59 cycle when the next ESR branch is due, even if the core technology hasn't been touched too much by then.

[Mouse5]

Even if XUL/XBL and XPCOM as such can stick around, support for XUL add-ons is scheduled to be removed with Gecko 57, and removal of complete theming is on the plate for a while now as well. Not so much affecting Thunderbird, but NPAPI plugins other than Flash will be disallowed with 52+ retail (still allowed in 52 ESR). The Mozilla devs were quickly to open bugs for removal of "plugin-specific code" (i.e., work-arounds or fixes for specific plugins), many of which have landed in the 53 cycle already. So, it will be interesting to see what's left in terms of extension/add-on support for the 59 cycle when the next ESR branch is due, even if the core technology hasn't been touched too much by then.

so kinda what your saying is. " its still pretty much up in the air at this point whats gonna happen till TB59 ? "

[rsx11m]

What I'm saying is that while the core technologies will likely continue to be around for a while (but not further developed or fixed by Mozilla) other bits and pieces Thunderbird (and other Gecko applications) currently rely on for certain features may (or may not) disappear following the next ESR round, depending on how "thorough" the Gecko/Toolkit core is relieved with respect to that "old" code which no longer desired by Firefox.

[Mouse5]

im not really worried what happens to TB in the long term as i only use it for Email an nothing else , as long as i got a email client im fine, i just dont wanna happen to login to webmail aLL THE TIME just to get email or send an email , but i have been a TB user since it was Born, ok i did use Outhouse for awhile but did change to TB