Hacker News

I've been using Thunderbird for decades, I've donated in the past, and am likely to donate again. With that out of the way, the lack of transparency as to what happens to my money kills the incentive to donate.

"How will my gift be used?"

"Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development."

Well that tells me exactly nothing. This might not be as big an issue if they were separate from Mozilla. To be concrete, and focusing only on the development of Firefox, there's now an AI chatbot in the sidebar. I think that's a good addition. However, when the only options are proprietary services, it's hard for me to see the point of Firefox. It would be easier to get out my credit card for Thunderbird if I didn't have those thoughts in the back of my mind. As it stands, my donation might be going to fund the Mozilla CEO's salary.

I use Thunderbird from the beginning when it was still named Firebird (I switched from Outlook Express). I think that it's a good product because it continues to do the job since more than 20 years. Me too I don't understand the negative comments. It's free (MPL license), it's packaged by Debian. All good. I don't care about Mozilla.

> Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now

I don't think that's the case.

"Thunderbird is part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation."

Thunderbirds sourcecode is literally part of the same mercury codebase as Firefox.

Thunderbird does have a very small team, and I think everyone that uses it should considering donating.

Likewise. Long time Thunderbird user since the original 1.0 days, for both work and personal use.

There's been a few ups and downs along the way but I've found it generally "just works" and gets out the way, which is exactly what I want in an email client.

I've tried almost every single email client I could find on Linux, and several on Windows (including Pegasus mail, if anyone remembers that), but always come back to Thunderbird.

I've been a regular donator to the project ever since they spun it out to MZLA Technologies Corporation.

I'm another appreciative long-term user. There are things about it that piss me off (especially the absence of a comfortable reading mode - with a quarter of an ordinary screen given over to ui and message headers) but it's been dependable over decades.

>Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now

Source?

Thunderbird is owned by Mozilla ... if I donate, my money goes to Mozilla.

I've been using TB for a decade and I too can't find anything better (even if my use case is very simple).

However, I find TB's development very misguided - it's evident to me that they give very little priority to stability:

- addons support (APIs) is a dumpster fire, and IMO a large addon ecosystem is what makes a client unique

- not so long ago, they added an instant messaging client, which has been a waste of dev resources

- at some point they overhauled the UI, but the result was a bloated slow mess (on some platforms), even with broken defaults

- there are bugs open for at least a decade (I consistently hit one)

It gives me the impression that the management prioritizes work that looks good on a screenshot, rather than stability.

I think it'd be positive if the Thunderbird org shut down. There are more pragmatic teams who could take over the project (see Betterbird).

I'm agog you're still using POP, honestly. ;)

Yeah, there's basically nothing explaining why the need more funding, and what they will do with it. Hosting? Salaries? Admin? You'd hope for a bit more context than this.

> How will my gift be used?

> Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development.

They are an entity separate from Mozilla:

* https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

I used to be a pretty heavy NNTP user... at some point, while it was largely left to rot, NNTP features themselves became much harder to use... the fact that the leading button on posts now "reply" is an email to the author of a post, instead of a response post is beyond me, and changing the behavior got worse release after release.

The fact that they haven't invested in anything resembling a companion set of services for shared calendar/contacts is also a heavy pain point in contrast to the use of GMail or Outlook/M365/Exchange. If they had offered hosted email/calendar/contacts alone as a monetization option, they could have done so well ahead of GMail or M365 options and could still do so and under-cut them... having an open-core suite just for communications.

They've left a lot of options out there to die... they effectively had Electron a few decades before Electron was a thing. XulRunner was pretty nice to use, and they just left it to die... it got worse over time and just stopped seeing updates. All the while, the charity org and business org just kept spinning their wheels and basically throwing money away... for decades now.

I've been using Thunderbird for my email for a very long time. Probably since some early 1.0 release.

In these years, I've also had it on Windows and Linux, I've migrated it easily across many OS installs and hardware changes, I've used it with different kinds of email accounts and servers. It's worked with PGP encrypted mail, with SpamAssassin on the server and more.

It's great. It doesn't change much, which is probably a good thing, Firefox lost me as a user at some point. Thunderbird mostly stays the same, adding features occasionally. As I write this, I realize I'm so used to Thunderbird I'm not even sure what other clients are available. Definitely one of the best programs I've used.

I can't get it to save emails that I've corresponded with on the Android app. I always have to find specific emails in the email history, and then "Compose message to". If I try to start a new email and start typing the name, or email address, there's no dropdown, no suggestion. Have you ever had this issue on Android?

people point to the rare bug report that deletes absolutely everything in the account. but at this point, I don't even know if it's true.

Gmail can be used from any modern platform through the web and has dedicated Android and iOS apps too.

The breaking changes, broken extensions and other bugs stopped me from using it altogether... I still have it on my phone (that version is based on K9 though), but long ago stopped using the shared dropbox profile. The profile rolled forward a version and I could no longer revert to an older version because of bugs in the app itself.

I used to love Thunderbird... I also used it a lot with BBS centric NNTP hosts... at some point those features largely broke as well, and extensions to correct the behavior fell farther and farther behind as well.

The lack of a good calendar/contacts server solution is also a massive pain point imo.

Is "half a billion dollars in yearly revenue" still synonymous with "half a billion dollars in funding from Google" or did they pivot? Are mozilla still trying to reimagine themselves as an ad tech company?

MZLA is owned by the FOUNDATION.

However, MZLA is self funded.

I don't see them begging anywhere, I only see someone sharing a link to their donate page.

For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird, as in if you give it money it goes straight into Thunderbird. Many people here pretend to wish to be able to give money directly to Firefox, yet when they can do that for Thunderbird, people here are still finding bullshit reasons not to do so. Pick a lane.

Basically the IRS is highly skeptical of the idea that free software development fits the legal definition of a 501(c)(3), and tends to reject such applications [1][2]. That is why Mozilla Foundation cannot use donations for Firefox development, and instead uses them for activism.

So that creates the strange situation where legally it is easier for free software developers to accept donations as a for-profit corporation than as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It is possible to instead incorporate as a not-for-profit corporation which doesn't have the tax advantages of a 501(c)(3), but does have the advantage of not being beholden to share holders. However, many people react negatively to this assuming that any not-for-profit that isn't a 501(c)(3) is a scam.

[1] https://www.stradley.com/business-vantage-point-blog/irs-con...

[2] https://www.mill.law/blog/more-501c3-rejections-open-source-...

Not that it answers your question, but the move happened in 2020 to "hire more easily, act more swiftly, and pursue ideas that were previously not possible".

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

They could EASILY have had and still could have a companion service for free/hosted email/calendar/contacts. It could even have an open implementation for "open-source" private hosting. Could be a great alternative to the enshittified Outlook/M365 even. Could pretty readily undercut alternatives and still be profitable.

At least as a point of funding the open-source work.

This is just organizational structure. "For-profit" doesn't mean "profitable". Also, the organization is "wholly owned" by a non-profit, so if there are profits declared in the form of dividends, those dividends are sent to the non-profit.

Note that many non-profits have exceptionally high-paid executives and "contractors".

Regulatory requirements on non-profit organizations are very high, and those organizations are, in fact, very limited in what they can do and how they receive their money. There are very good reasons for a non-profit to own for-profit entities, and, similarly, for philanthropic organizations to organize as for-profit entities.

Please no. The Mozilla Foundation has lost their way. I don't want them messing with my favorite email client.

Most of the smashing up and disfiguration of a perfectly good interface, uglification, waste and breakage of both data and compatibility were introduced in a rewrite 2023 ostensibly aiming for "fresh" design and user interface work.

I'd heed the call for donation simply for returning to pre-2023 design with up-to-date security patches. As it is, maybe it's merciful if development just comes to a standstill. Almost every visible step lately seems to move in the wrong direction.

Mozilla Corporation may have enough money, but they don't develop Thunderbird. If you used the donation form on this page, you didn't donate to Mozilla Corporation, but to the company developing Thunderbird. So all is fine.

>I once donated to Wikipedia - and they have billions I heard

I had no idea one way or the other, but if I'm reading this right [1] they are around $150MM currently for their endowment. Mozilla, meanwhile is actually around $1.2 billion and counting. But I think that makes sense for both, Wiki has the strongest donation drive in the world, and Mozilla is much more exposed to risk and in need of its firewall.

I don't think it changes anything, they're both good donation targets and Thunderbird is separately financed anyway so they still benefit from the $$ but I was surprised to see Wiki with the lower endowment.

1. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AFY...

The reason Wikipedia has so much is that the end goal is for it to be self sustaining through interest iirc

I'm just using Evolution. Switched from Thunderbird a few weeks ago. So far, so good.

Mozilla and Mozla are two different corporations though both under the mozilla foundation.

I'd donate to have Mozilla raise Thunderbird to second class.

Mozilla tried to kill Thunderbird in 2020. They've been talking about not sponsoring it all since 2015.

They might have the money, but they don't really seem to want anything to do with the project.

That's apparently mostly from Google to be the default search engine in Firefox. Diversifying their income streams is a good move.

The MZLA company that makes Thunderbird is also working on improving self-funding by launching a Thunderbird-branded webmail service.

Mozilla is so sad. They have a lot of money and they could fund the development of both Firefox and Thunderbird.

Yet, they decide to waste almost $7 million per year to pay a CEO and God knows what else.

What do they do with all that money? According to wikipedia, they had about 750 employees. That's a lot of employees for the amount of useful products they have.

They need a lot of money to pay their useless execs, so 700 million must be barely enough to keep things running

Was going to say it's here, but it's not indeed, you can join the waitlist: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/

I think email is one of the few critical services that takes a lot of effort to get it right. I'd rather have them take a while to ensure it is reliable rather than have a buggy mess on launch day.

Probably nothing. It is the Firefox revenue that pays her unreasonable salary.

1. $0. 2. Probably close to 100%.

The online university I'm attending has something similar set up where third party Exchange client support is disabled, making official Outlook client usage non-optional.

It's very frustrating and I can't think of a valid reason to configure things this way.

You know what is nice? If you have clients that get automatically switched to "the new Outlook" and loose all imap connections (and they don't work anymore, period).

Took me so long to learn that the fix was to switch back to the old Outlook.

There's also two different applications which are both "Outlook for Mac".

If you go into the "Outlook" menu in the app, there's a "Legacy Outlook" button, which relaunches outlook using a completely different binary. The two outlook implementations have different bugs and all sorts of different behaviour.

Outlook For Mac is free but "legacy outlook" requires a MS365 subscription for some reason.

Outlook is also not to be confused with Microsoft's "Web Outlook" client, available at outlook.live.com. It all seems totally insane.

> Where do the billions of dollars from Google go?

They go to the Mozilla Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances

The Mozilla Corporation then picks and chooses what it finances within the Mozilla Foundation. Their financial statements don't break down how they spend on software development within the Foundation, it only lists out employee salaries, specific directors' salaries and grants to outsiders... but it would seem Thunderbird doesn't get much if they're out begging.

https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

So, as an example, in 2024, it got:

- $498,218,000 from royalties (e.g. Google)

- $66,396,000 from paid services (e.g Pocket, VPN) and advertisers

- $15,782,000 from donations

And it spent:

- $290,448,000 on programmer salaries

- $163,516,000 on manager salaries

- $36,358,000 on servers, cloud, etc.

- $20,258,000 on consultants (e.g. branding consultants)

- $9,573,000 on travel

- $2,192,000 on grants and fellowships

So overall, it didn't spent that much on the stupid doomed side projects! It spent a lot more on flying managers and marketing consultants to nice soirees.

But the real question, not answered by this financial report, is how much programming labour was spent on Thunderbird, versus other Mozilla projects?

I wasn't able to reproduce the back button hijack. It never asks me for an email address, regardless of what I try.

Thought the same..

LibreWolf should have no reason to exist. It does because Mozilla’s values are largely marketing.

I don't think it's a dark pattern. Just a common marketing thing. Not "everything that annoys me" is a dark pattern.

I'm pretty sure they show it something like once a year, and it takes two seconds to close it, if you can't spare two seconds of your life every year for something you get for free then you were never going to donate anything.

I think it's more disrespectful to judge so harshly a company - that puts out wonderful, free, open source software - asking for donations 1 or 2 times a year with a message that is easy to close.

I think they are just hating on Mozilla out of pure principles, but without any alternative.

For Windows the pickings are unfortunately slim. On Apple platforms I use Mail.app which has done its job quite well for decades but as of yet haven't found analogues for Windows and Linux.

Under Linux, Geary once held promise but has long since stagnated and is too basic.

As far as I know there isn't one. Maybe Evolution if they have managed to fix all the bugs it used to have. it is a sad state of affairs that we have so few useful email clients.

I still use Thunderbird but on my Linux system that I just set up I would like to try something else.

Some options appear in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/17r3twi/best_wind...

If you’re doing a new install and are generally fine with Thunderbird, Betterbird is a good option. It has additional good stuff that Thunderbird is lacking or took longer to get implemented/fixed.

What I don’t like about Thunderbird is that the profiles aren’t portable. It seems like every Thunderbird install is its own unique mess. I’d love to find something that allowed me to move the same configuration around between computers and platforms. I’m not sure if that exists.

I like how Thunderbird has the ability to handle mail, calendar, and contacts, but the implementation especially for calendar leaves a lot to be desired.

My favorite clients are Apple Mail/Calendar for their simplicity and being local-first clients but I’m using macOS less and less these days.

The “new outlook” that’s offered by Microsoft to consumers for free seems to be creepy and syncs your emails to Microsoft servers even if you’re using a third party client.

I’d also say you only need a truly local client if you have multiple email addresses. If you have just one email, let’s say you’re with FastMail or something, their web mail and mobile/desktop apps are great.

Outlook Express

[]->

I hope you have spam filtering happening somewhere upstream of your local computer. Spammers are constantly adjusting to find ways around filters, and there is no way a third class open source legacy email client I going to be able to give their filter the continuous attention it needs to stay effective.

You can do that. It's called a restricted donation. If you make a donation with a cover letter or a check memoizing a specific purpose and the nonprofit accepts it, then by law they're legally obligated to follow through and use that money for that purpose. With bugs it's probably easier because you can just write the bug ID on the check.

Curiously, JMAP is on the roadmap for the iOS client, but I don't see it in the desktop client roadmap https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap. But seeing as how it will power their Thundermail service, I would assume all clients would need the support

I sadly have to agree. The damned thing struggles with a handful of basic stuff, it still has a config UI of which you can't tell head from tail, complete with teeth and whiskers and even a full "about:config" panel à la Firefox hidden underneath. Spell checker. Calendar. Chat client. Complete web-browser internals, with grindy disk-caching. To add insult to injury, the macOS bundle is half a fxxxing GiB in size (universal flavor, but still).

This is downvoted but needs to be said. Thunderbird was an amazing 90's style piece of software that has unfortunately been been changed into a more "modern" look, with excessive white space and power-user hostile work flows.

It was near perfect, just needed better search, pretty much.

What did you switch to?

What do you use now?

Why does there need to be urgency? Isn’t it better to avoid a situation where there’s a critical need?

Stripe supports 3d secure and has for years. https://stripe.com/en-ca/guides/3d-secure-2

Fineprint says it's Stripe. My (european) credit card worked fine.

https://www.tb.pro/en-US/thundermail/

  Hosted Securely in Germany 

  Your emails are protected by strict EU privacy laws and hosted on infrastructure you can trust. With servers located in Germany, Thundermail prioritizes your privacy while ensuring reliable, fast delivery worldwide.

em Client has no Linux version though?

Yes, which has ensured I never donate to them again. It's my computer not MZLA's billboard.

No? It is the best email client of the market but it is far from feature complete.

Seamonkey or claws mifht be good alternatives too.

http://seamonkey-project.org/

https://claws-mail.org/

How is KMail and Evolution at this point? I have not tried them in like 10 years. Are they actively maintained and a real alternative for serious email use?

The Android build is a re-branded (and some might say, crippled) K-9 Mail, which AFAIR did not support NNTP. Adding it might be more work than they are willing to do.

As if writing a browser and an email client is a piece of cake and there are tons of alternatives ready to take over. Blink and WebKit don't count.

In all seriousness, it might be good to write up more of the issues that you have for at least a few reasons:

1. TB probably(?) doesn't consider use cases like the one that you described. If there is any hope of them fixing it, it would be best to be underscored in detail. Perhaps then someone can try to propagate some fake test data to try and test against.

2. There's always the chance someone might be willing to fork it in hopes of improvement (E.g. BetterBird; betterbird.eu)

3. Sometimes screaming loud enough gains attention of people in a position to do something about it. Not super common, but does happen from time-to-time.

4. Who would pass up a chance to embarass Mozilla publicly? :^)