If you had any experience of the Mozilla TB devs over the last decade or so then you would know why. I can base my comments on conversations with members of the Council, and devs, along with watchign their lists for years.
No, it is not. They like to say they are, but it is a complete nonsense.
They are not really independent from Mozilla. Mozilla holds the strings and pulls them about like puppets.
They have some very strange ways of muzzling anyone who they don’t like or doesn’t agree with them. A lot of that comes from Mozilla imposed policies.
They have a number of mailing lists that you cannot get on very easily, and others which are heavily moderated. “Free Speech” is out.
They are more than happy to tell you ‘We love it so you will too’. Fingers in ears and ‘lalalalala’
They are happy to completely break things in pursuit of their goals without a by-your-leave for users.
They’ll tell you “the future is email as the number of email addresses is increasing” (of course - people register new devices, but for most young people that is their last use of email), but at the same time develop a chat client…
They claim ‘success’ and ‘the users love it’ when they force upgrade you, and immediately remove all old copies so you cannot go back even if you wanted to because the new version sucks and totally breaks all your plugins, and therefore your business.
They do that without ensuring there are all the API hooks necessary so you can upgrade your plugins making it impossible to upgrade. And then tell you that you are out of date, and do the ‘lalalalala’ trick again.
They have tried to make an email client that is essentially a browser (Follow the Fox - pop ups banned and all tabs which don’t work for a lot of scenarios) with a few bells and whistles, to the point you may pretty well use a web browser and some platform of web based mail software eg Roundcube/Horde/Whatever
So all in all this is an absolutely dire move, but does explain some of the more recent moves at K9.
This means for me a future without both Thunderbird AND K9. Tragic.
Sounds like a great match for developers who take your donations and say they owe you nothing. Pushing fundamental GUI changes and plucking their ears… Mmh, where have we seen something like that happen recently?
I was referring to third party trackers for advertising, and I was surprised and disappointed to find them in Firefox given Mozilla’s stance on privacy (and also in Fennec on F-Droid). Telemetry is less concerning, particularly if it is optional.
With todays version you almost may as well use a browser & webmail.
They purposefully chose to stick with Firefox underneath to save development time so were then forced into the corner of following whatever the FF Moz devs decided. So TB is essentially a skinned, refined browser, like say KomodoIDE or Electron/Chrome based apps
And hence the mess that is TB today, continually struggling to keep up with a browser, and devs who have no interest in a mail client.
Thank you to the k9mail developers for all their hard work. I used both (for a while) and have used a long chain of different mailers over the years… tbird, claws, sylpheed, mutt, my own, mh, bsdmail, gmail, … many are good, many are not so good, some are very obtrusive (because they try to sabotage rather than obey de-facto standards).
Unfortunately, underlying protocols (such as POP3 and IMAP) seem to be the subject of continuing contention among “very moneyed” organizations now processing email internationally for “next to nothing”. If I had to nominate ONE improvement that is sorely needed among all mailers, it is to patch synchronization inside and between protocols to avoid loss of email. That’s why I dropped k9mail. The fact that this problem has existed for more than two decades does not foretell a happy ending… both protocols serve different purposes; worse yet, sync failure covers up losing email accidentally-on-purpose and “that is acceptable”; both protocols are needed, but the industry seems to favor leaving this problem and failing to develop a test suite for synchronization. The problem seems to be in the “enforcement” arena. Clout might be needed.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by third-party trackers. K-9 Mail and Thunderbird are all about privacy. We have absolutely no interest in collecting your data to sell it.
The app does not and will not include ads.
And we’re doing our best to make it hard for others to track you e.g. via tracking pixels in emails. When displaying emails, loading remote content is disabled by default.
Ich kann als Thunderbird Nutzer unter Linux nur sagen, dass ich mit Thunderbird sehr zufrieden bin. Ich ich diese Neuigkeit erfahren habe, habe ich mir natürlich sofort K9 auf meinem Smartphone installiert.
K9 gefällt mir sehr gut, besser als FairEMail oder Google Mail.
Geben wir den Entwicklern doch einfach einmal eine Chance. Ich bin guter Dinge, dass es prima wird.
I’ve read several comments here about how disappointed someone is regarding this merger…however, I for one am more than happy to have Thunderbird, in any shape or manner, on my Android mobile phone. I am a Linux user, running Arch, openSUSE and Fedora; use Thunderbird (on my Xfce distros)/Evolution (on my Gnome distros)/KMail (on my Plasma distros); do my utmost to remove anything to do with google from all my devices (except this mobile - I would love a Linux phone - I’m Pine-ing for one) and will have nothing at all to do with microsoft (as far as I can discern - who knows what’s lurking - like fake vaccines to cure fake viruses). So, as someone that’s donated to the Thunderbird cause, when I heard there would be an app coming to the 'phone…. So, bring it on: contacts, calendar, anything and everything…I’m with you Thunderbird!
This project now desperately needs a fork, one which will be actually focused on privacy and independence from privacy-intruding and political policies of big tech companies like Mozilla.
It has needed one since 5.7 and later revisions came in with sweeping changes. There was OpenMail, it’s mentioned here and there but I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
The problem is any fork of code from the 5.6 era won’t be accepted by google; they force you to use their latest API or get out of their market. Which means rewriting in their approved ways some functionality.
Worse, with oauth enforced on anyone who doesn’t share their phone no with them (aka 2FA, despite both factors being carried our in 1 device) google can hold your email forked app ransom if the code isn’t to their liking. The author of the bloated (25MB size) email client FairEmail learn the hard way. Google still forbids his FDroid release from conneting over oauth (his google market & github releases making that possible). It is painfully clear maintaining a fork under the circumstances could prove difficult, with google kicking you off their market at a whim for failing to keep up with their ever changing Android APIs.
A fork is possible but rather offered via alternative markets, like FDroid, but with no guarantees it won’t be rendered useless at any whim of google’s under the pretext of ‘protecting its users’ (e.g. from running a client they deem too old or not in google market). This is how evil and devious google has become in an attempt to drive users to their own ad-infested appware.
I have similar concerns about future development of K9 becoming insular and kept behind closed doors, with a bunch of Mozilla insiders pulling the strings. I’m saddened to hear other users have found the same.
Thunderbird has become bloated with bad features while failing to deliver changes in the standard feature departament (think how poor the search and filter is).
K9 was started to be an Android synonym for mutt, a simple mail client without any bells and whistles. Is Mozilla leadership going to honour that? I doubt it.
The decision about renaming it at some point in the future shows things are already going in the wrong direction. Why not keep the name, which does not immediately invoke a bloated email client, like Thunderbird, in mind.
By now I find installing applications from F-Droid to be better than installing them from Google Play Store, so I don’t feel that would affect me, or be a minus at all, given Google’s overall practices.
Google still forbids his FDroid release from conneting over oauth (his google market & github releases making that possible).
They still allow connecting with “app passwords”, and even if they weren’t, people should still migrate away from Gmail, as the whole service is just a cover-up for one more way for Google to collect user data. I migrated away from Gmail myself.
A fork is possible but rather offered via alternative markets, like FDroid, but with no guarantees it won’t be rendered useless at any whim of google’s under the pretext of ‘protecting its users’ (e.g. from running a client they deem too old or not in google market). This is how evil and devious google has become in an attempt to drive users to their own ad-infested appware.
Ungoogled Chromium is one such project, and yet it is still alive and kicking. I’d say it is the only browser actually protecting privacy on mobile, to the extent that is possible on the platform of course.
I’ve been using K-9 Mail since I got my first Android phone in 2012, that’s ten years. And I’ve been using Thunderbird for much longer. As a long time user of both programs, this is the best possible outcome. Period.
Joining the Thunderbird family will also ensure the much needed financial stability for the project and @cketti, an essential requirement for the continued development and maintenance!
App passwords aren’t possible unless you share your phone no with them under the pretext of needing it for 2FA. Which, implemented within the bounds of a single device, is a security joke. Phone number is the last missing bit of info I’ll be sharing with google. Have got the account in an era when phone nos weren’t compulsory.
I don’t disagree about moving elsewhere but the reality is not everyone has that ability. It requires an effort that’s impractical for most and google knows it.
I’d beg to disagree, for reasons I outlined above. More bloat and paying little attention to feedback but of a handful of insiders. Your opinion is merely one individual, whereas I can count several quite informed concerns amounting to more than a meaningless “Period”.
Hardly, on both counts. I put succinctly the actual concerns this merger brings.
If you mean yourself as a “fellow user” then I took issue with your expressing a somewhat arrogant “Period”, and now “FUD”, which is very dismissive of the valid concerns (have you at all done any legwork at mozilla’s insider threads? No? Then case dismissed) other user besides me have expressed. You’re entitled to hold any views but if you voice them publically don’t expect everyone will cheer at your “Period’s”.
really upset about this… should always be far far far away from mozila, including firefox and thunderbird, very very slow, memory-exhausting softwares mozila has been making
Should is wishful thinking. Fundingwise it is a win but on other counts, this project can only be expected to receive more bloat and keep ignoring user input, as a commenter here brought up.
. So, bring it on: contacts, calendar, anything and everything…I’m with you Thunderbird!