Thunderbird & Mozilla Messaging

Mozilla Messaging: Motivation

• Alignment with the Mozilla Manifesto
• Messaging & mail are key parts of Internet use
• Mail must remain open, accessible, interoperable
• Open source & transparency is the key to accountability, participation and trust
• Thunderbird has been starved for resources and attention inside Mozilla Corporation
• Independent Thunderbird organization provides greater focus, accountability, funding...
• Set up for sucess - proven product, 6-10m users, financial backing

Mozilla Messaging: Operation

• Work as part of the larger Mozilla community
  (as publicly and transparently as possible)
• Build interest in Thunderbird and messaging technologies
• Focus on building great mail technologies and innovation
• Figure out a way to sustain with funding over the next couple of years.

Mozilla Messaging: Launch

• This past week
• Website launched: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/
• Small group hired to start
  (more to come)

Mozilla Messaging: Immediate Focus

• Thunderbird 3 - Build a roadmap and get people and groups involved
• Goal:  Have public milestone builds of TB3 in 2008
• alpha - q1?
• beta - q2?
• beta with calendar - q3?
• final?

Thunderbird 3: Work Underway

• Continuing regular releases is key
• Lots of ways TB3 could be great; must focus on a few
• Based on Gecko 1.9
  (like Firefox 3)
• Community discussion has already begun 
• search:  "Thunderbird 3 planning"
• http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird  newsgroup/mailing list

TB 3: Key User-Visible Changes

• Integrated calendaring
  (Lightning)
• Better search
  (Full text indexing, probably using SQLite with ICU stemming support)
• Faster workflow
  (UI & performance improvements; cache all IMAP messages by default)
• Simpler config
  (automated by combo of heuristics and probing)

TB 3: Key Developer-Visible Changes

• SVG turned on and usable by extensions
• STEEL
  (cleaner APIs for common tasks - Tb version of FUEL)
• Code cleanups begin
  (addressbook: mork replaced by SQLite; interface cleanup for more pluggability)

Longer-Term Goals...

• Integrate mutiple messaging technologies
  (IM, mobile, ...)
• Incorporate open standards
  (implementing and helping drive; CalDAV work already underway)
• Get involved with work in e-mail privacy, spam prevention, & other areas which degrade mail experiance and usage.

Future Possibilities

• Integrate with the Web
  (bring web-based features and sites much more tightly into Thunderbird)
• People matter more than accounts
  (think OpenSocial, addressbooks, cross-protocol indexing/searching/views)
• Much better pluggability and extensibility

Join the Community

• Develop - Work on the TB3 core and see your code used by millions
• Extend - Build add-ons and give feedback to improve the platform
• Localize - currently at 37 languages
• QA and Testing - Grab Nightlies and Milestones! Triage Bugs
• Make accessible
• Document
• Answer questions/help provide support
• http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.support.thunderbird
• MozillaZine Forums

Key Community Links

• http://www.mozillamessaging.com/
• Join #maildev on irc.mozilla.org
• Newsgroup/mailing list pairs:
  • http://www.mozilla.org/community/developer-forums.html

Q & A