What after Thunderbird support ends?

mcloaked · 2015-12-01 21:45:01

In the news today it is reported that Mozilla support for Thunderbird might end in 2016: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunde … m-mozilla/

Given that a significant number of arch users ( and linux users in general) use the Thunderbird mail client, and it is maintained and installable from main arch repos is there any plan to provide an alternative once Thunderbird stops being supported - for example would fossamail be a possible replacement?

http://www.fossamail.org/ and they have reasonably recent linux builds at http://www.fosshub.com/FossaMail.html

Trilby · 2015-12-01 22:16:40

I'm not sure I understand the question. An arch dev does maintain a package for the upstream-provided Thunderbird. If upstream stops providing Thunderbird, then it will (eventually) no longer be in the repos. Responsibility does not fall on an arch dev to find a "replacement". There are countless other email clients in the repos and AUR - so it falls on you to find your replacement. So is this a "Try This" worthy thread? Are you asking what other Thunderbird users intend to do? Because archlinux in general will not need to do anything.

If you want Fossamail to be a viable alternative - first start by packaging it for the AUR. From there, if it seems to work well, a TU may pull it in to [community], and then it could be what you want in an alternative.

EDIT: I just read the link you provided, and there is certainly no indication that Thunderbird will cease to exist. It is just being split to be it's own more independendent entity from firefox:

Baker notes that it is not clear whether Mozilla will try to spin off Thunderbird as its own open-source entity, or whether it will seek a business partner to take over the product

I read that as eventually there will not be a Mozilla Thunderbird. But their could be a Canonical Thunderbird, or SUSE Thunderbird, or some such (I just pulled those names out of thin air, I have no idea if those are the types of groups that Mozilla would hand it over to).

Last edited by Trilby (2015-12-01 22:21:06)

ewaller · 2015-12-01 22:39:24

I saw that article earlier today. My take was that they wanted to decouple the projects to allow them to both move forward.

brebs · 2015-12-01 23:28:54

mcloaked wrote:

once Thunderbird stops being supported

Well, it's used too extensively to die, so will probably be picked up by some other "group" - and hopefully it'll have its focus as being *an email client*, for a change, rather than a web browser (with lotsa complicated web browser bugs) which also happens to be an email client.

Trilby · 2015-12-01 23:51:00

brebs wrote:

Well, it's used too extensively to die, so will probably be picked up by some other "group" - and hopefully it'll have its focus as being *an email client*, for a change, rather than a web browser (with lotsa complicated web browser bugs) which also happens to be an email client.

Then you should hope whomever picks it up is not an emacs user. Otherwise they'll expand the browser functionality, add a special gopher-browser interface, the ability to remotely control your office Keurig, make dinner reservations, book a flight, and send text messages. But the emailing abilities will gradually degrade (as will your finger joints - as to actually compose an email you'll have to continuously hold down three modifier keys as the release of all the keys signals the end of the composition and it is then sent).

ewaller · 2015-12-02 00:24:20

*Hey*

OTOH, emacs does a nice job as a mail client already

R00KIE · 2015-12-02 10:24:31

If I recall correctly this is not the first time Mozilla has played this tune and they are still providing security updates, for the time being at least. The problem is they seem to really want to get rid of thunderbird and we have no idea who will pick it up and what direction it will take, as already said in this thread. It is also unpredictable what will happen to TB derived clients once mozilla stops providing security updates and changes firefox completely.

What the OP probably meant was asking, and that I've also started to wonder, if there is a gui client that works similarly to thunderbird, which might still be supported in the medium/long term and preferably that doesn't pull a ton of dependencies of either kde or gnome. Claws Mail might fit the bill and is in the repos, but I don't know how easy it would be to change over from TB, this means importing all mails and dealing with encrypted emails (managed by enigmail on the TB side). As anyone done this conversion before and had to deal with any gotchas?

mcloaked · 2015-12-02 10:47:13

Thank you for all the replies. I was really asking the question because a year or two back I did an extensive survey of available linux email clients (MUA) - and could not at the time find any other package that provided the set of criteria that I want from my mail client for daily use (things like smime support, html mail fully supported, calendar functions including google calendar within the client, maildir format for storage, good imap idle functionality for push email etc). Seeing the potential for Mozilla to move Thunderbird support, which admittedly is mainly security and minor bug fixes in recent times rather than development of new functionality, it was not clear whether another group would take on maintenance and development. Indeed the basic gecko engine is long overdue for replacement and there is a fair amount of developer work needed even to maintain the existing code base. It would indeed be great if Thunderbird does continue to be maintained by another group if Mozilla does abandon it, but it is not guaranteed at this point in time. With that as a background I was really posting to see if anyone was aware of an alternative that would provide comparable functionality to this package. I certainly was not expecting "arch" to find a replacement and of course it is always the case that individual arch users or TUs have an individual interest in supporting a specific package in community/extra or AUR as always. However a discussion on the forum could bring to light packages that are not well known or being developed that someone reading the forum might become interested enough in to add a package to the repos. I did explore fossamail a bit more after posting last night and it seems to be pretty far behind the current Thunderbird version, so it seems to be using quite an old source code for Thunderbird as its basis, and also seems to be a very limited number of developers, so would be a package that might be at risk of losing support if the main dev for fossamail decided to move away to other projects. Whether or not developers and maintainers who look after the existing Thunderbird code and bug fixing would be interested enough in Fossamail to work on that instead, or whether they might feel inclined to work on Thunderbird if it is adopted by a different group than Mozilla is not clear.

I certainly rely heavily on Thunderbird for my daily communication and calendar management so any alternative for me needs to be able to do the same things that Thunderbird does - so it is a concern. Claws mail was also mentioned in the replies but when I explored it a year or so back it lacked some features that Thunderbird has so for me was not a viable alternative. It is possible that this discussion may not yield anything positive but airing the options might just bring something useful to people's minds.

PS the issue of importing mail to a different client is not too much of a problem if you use imap - since it is usually possible to simply set up the imap details for an account and let the new mail client sync all the mail folders. If you also keep a local imap server on your own machine for local copies then again you can just add your local imap account and let it all sync. Any encrypted mail on any of the servers will also be visible if you import the certificates into the new client. Similarly any calendars can simply sync in a new client once the links to the calendar server are set up in the new client - so it is all really a matter of which features are supported in an alternative client.

Last edited by mcloaked (2015-12-02 10:51:31)

brebs · 2015-12-02 12:11:16

mcloaked wrote:

rely heavily on Thunderbird

You are not alone, so don't worry.

I don't think there is a decent open-source alternative to Thunderbird + Enigmail + Lightning.

Thunderbird as a project will not die. As an example of what will happen, see VeraCrypt's continuation of TrueCrypt.

Trilby · 2015-12-02 13:38:07

brebs wrote:

Thunderbird as a project will not die.

Perhaps it will - briefly. But then it will rise from the ashes ... as THUNDER PHENIX!

R00KIE · 2015-12-02 14:48:35

Lets all hope thunderbird lives on for a long time with whatever name it will have but plan for the worst and have a plan b ready to go

I've played a bit with claws mail and at first glance it seems to be able to do everything I do with TB currently but importing all the mails with sub-directories is probably going to be a major pain. I also don't see how I one can "import" the gpg keys being used with enigmail. For the first problem this thread [1] might provide something useful, for the second problem I'll need to research more.

[1] http://claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/2 … 02640.html

Trilby · 2015-12-02 14:52:32

This is why I so much prefer the modularity the "do one thing and do it well" tools. I replaced offlineimap with isync for syning local maildirs to remote imap servers ... no change on the surface of how I do things. If isync ever goes away, I'll go back to offlineimap, or find another sync program. I can read mail in mutt, but if mutt ever goes away, I still have all my maildirs, and I can use any other client to read them - or even just open them in a text editor.

I did not know that thunderbird kept so much necessary information in some opaque data format that couldn't easily be used by other mail clients. It is MZ (mozilla) not MS, right?

c0mm0ner · 2015-12-02 15:11:25

I also don't see how I one can "import" the gpg keys being used with enigmail

https://www.enigmail.net/documentation/keyman.php And if you don't want to use it: Enigmail simply uses an openpgp keystore you can access with gnupg. i never used it on a linux system, but i've seen it using the default keyrings in ~/.gnupg on a friends ubuntu machine.

R00KIE · 2015-12-02 15:40:55

Trilby wrote:

I did not know that thunderbird kept so much necessary information in some opaque data format that couldn't easily be used by other mail clients. It is MZ (mozilla) not MS, right?

It's not that it is opaque, the files are in mbox format, but if you have subdirectories, each one is a mbox file, so one needs to create the directory structure beforehand and then import one by one. There might be some magic tool to do this but I don't trust magic tools very much as they usually miss something and it's a pain to sort things out afterwards.

The imap setup you use sounds nice, I have looked into changing to imap before and at the time it would be a pain to change with little gain, maybe I'll have to look into it again. All my accounts are still using pop because it's how they started their life, and in total it's around 10GB of data, I really don't want to have to sync that much just to change to imap.

c0mm0ner wrote:

https://www.enigmail.net/documentation/keyman.php And if you don't want to use it: Enigmail simply uses an openpgp keystore you can access with gnupg. i never used it on a linux system, but i've seen it using the default keyrings in ~/.gnupg on a friends ubuntu machine.

I know things are stored in ~/.gnupg and gpa can see/manage the keys without a problem, what I was trying to say is that I don't know how to get claws-mail's gpg plugins to see those same keys or use the same keyring.

c0mm0ner · 2015-12-02 15:50:40

Sorry, i got it wrong. I did in fact use claws-mail for a long time and it did use my ~/.gnupg by default, therefore i was mistaken.

Trilby · 2015-12-02 16:08:43

It's a bit off topic, but you wouldn't need to convert 10GB from pop to imap. Pop and imap are just communication protocols (I didn't know anyone still used pop!). You wouldn't need to refetch the 10GB of mail via a new protocol, you'd just sync any new changes between the source and the local store.

bleach · 2015-12-02 16:28:25

if i read right mozilla is just not going to personally maintain it anymore but it will be maintained by someone else so support is npt ending thier just outsourcing.

Roken · 2015-12-02 21:30:09

To answer the OP, I'll, ermm. continue to use TB. Simples.

mcloaked · 2015-12-02 21:55:48

Roken wrote:

To answer the OP, I'll, ermm. continue to use TB. Simples.

For the time being I will continue to also use TB but once security updates a no longer provided it will be time to look at alternatives if they are available at that time. Hopefully Thunderbird will continue to be supported even after Mozilla no longer does so as part of its browser development programme.

Alad · 2015-12-02 22:13:43

So, it would end up like SeaMonkey?

respiranto · 2015-12-02 22:33:30

Alad wrote:

So, it would end up like SeaMonkey?

If it continues like this, I will not need a graphical user interface anymore soon:
Switched from SeaMonkey to vim for editing HTML.
Would probably switch from Thunderbird, resp. Icedove in my case, to Mutt, since those two are the only email clients I seem capable to properly configure.
And if Firefox / Icecat should ever cease to exist, ...

Well, I have to capitulate, I'd probably switch to qutebrowser completely, since the web in the CLI is simply not the same.

Trilby · 2015-12-03 03:23:32

respiranto wrote:

Well, I have to capitulate, I'd probably switch to qutebrowser completely, since the web in the CLI is simply not the same.

I'm at about the same point. But I'd probably use X even if it weren't for web browsers (I really wish gopher protocol held more ground). But I like more than the 16 console colors. I don't need millions, but 256 is quite nice. I know fbterm or other framebuffer thingies can give a 256 color terminal, but frankly some of them are harder to configure compared to just firing up a (DE-free, 50 loc WM) X session.

mcloaked · 2015-12-03 10:55:32

Alad wrote:

So, it would end up like SeaMonkey?

There is a thread concerning sea monkey at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic … vmEOIOXPxE

So it seems that Sea Monkey might also be affected by changes to Thunderbird support.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-12-01 21:45:01

What after Thunderbird support ends?

#2 2015-12-01 22:16:40

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#3 2015-12-01 22:39:24

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#4 2015-12-01 23:28:54

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#5 2015-12-01 23:51:00

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#6 2015-12-02 00:24:20

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#7 2015-12-02 10:24:31

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#8 2015-12-02 10:47:13

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#9 2015-12-02 12:11:16

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#10 2015-12-02 13:38:07

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#11 2015-12-02 14:48:35

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#12 2015-12-02 14:52:32

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#13 2015-12-02 15:11:25

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#14 2015-12-02 15:40:55

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#15 2015-12-02 15:50:40

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#16 2015-12-02 16:08:43

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#17 2015-12-02 16:28:25

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#18 2015-12-02 21:30:09

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#19 2015-12-02 21:55:48

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#20 2015-12-02 22:13:43

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#21 2015-12-02 22:33:30

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

#22 2015-12-03 03:23:32

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#23 2015-12-03 10:55:32

Re: What after Thunderbird support ends?

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