HELO, Mozilla Messaging (and bad GPS, bad)

MAIL FROM IT Blogwatch: in which The Mozilla Foundation spins off Mozilla Messaging, to rejuvenate the Thunderbird email client. Not to mention when GPS vehicle navigation turns bad...

Dan Nystedt reports:

The Mozilla Foundation Tuesday opened Mozilla Messaging, a new subsidiary focused on developing its free, open-source Thunderbird e-mail software. Mozilla Messaging will initially focus on developing Thunderbird 3, which aims at improving several aspects of the software ... The Mozilla Foundation is best known for creating the Firefox Web browser ... Mozilla Messaging will continue using the open source model ... maintaining a small product development team to work with contributors from around the world on Thunderbird software. [more]

VRFY david.ascher@mozilla.org:

The stunning proportion of our days spent communicating online clearly indicates that as a society, we are more intricately connected via the internet than ever before ... [but] the joy that communication can bring is too often replaced by frustration, confusion, or stress ... [and] privacy and control questions become more and more troublesome ... Thunderbird 2 is already a hugely successful product ... We can make it even better ... Email is broken. What are you going to do about it?. [more]

Sean Fallon gives it a rousing 250:

[It] promises significant improvements to the email client—like calendar integration, better search, and a chat app. While the core focus will still be on email, Mozilla seems committed to developing a product that will offer a broader range of communications tools. Whether or not it will be good enough to get Thunderbird back on track remains to be seen. [more]

But Paul Stamatiou replies with a 554:

Mozilla Messaging is the name and ignoring prevalent web trends is the game. That is, the prevalent trends relating to the proliferation and utility of highly accessible web applications instead of local software ... David seems to be missing the whole movement towards web applications. Unless Mozilla starts recognizing this, they will remain behind hugely successful web applications geared towards email communications ... If you ask me, desktop email clients might even be a lost cause ... Mozilla Messaging - yes, no or epic fail? [more]

EXPN Jason.Mick:

The small staff of Mozilla Messaging hopes to do big things, with the help of open-source developers around the world ... Its board of directors includes a couple of former Mozilla Foundation executives, consisting of David Ascher, CEO, Mozilla Messaging; Christopher Beard, VP and General Manager, Mozilla Labs; and Marten Mickos, CEO of open source database vendor MySQL AB. [more]

David A. Utter makes with the avian punnage:

Good thing Ascher signed on to fix it. That job begins now, with Mozilla Messaging taking wing today. First order of business: Thunderbird 3 development. Early news of this as posted at Mozilla should be encouraging ... We think the calendaring news presents the most important aspect of Thunderbird, aside from its email handling ... Ascher's group will integrate Lightning, Thunderbird's calendar add-on, into Thunderbird 3. That should prove a key selling point in the future, as Thunderbird develops from great product to potential enterprise adoption. [more]

savala speculates:

Spinning Mozilla Messaging off actually means it has the chance to finally get the attention it deserves. The Mozilla Corporation has been totally focussed on Firefox (since that's their big cashcow, and it's hard to do two things well), and the Mozilla Foundation is mostly just an oversight and broad planning organization, so a separate organization was needed to let email stand on its own. The Mozilla Foundation hopes that Mozilla Messaging will find its own source of income fairly soon. [more]

But LurkerXXX disagrees:

As far as I see, this is their chance to quietly get rid of Thunderbird without making it look like they are ditching it. Who is the big funder of the mozilla (firefox) project now? Google. Why? So they have a nice browser to use their search engine and show their ads that MS can't set with MSN as the default ... Now what about email? Google has gmail. They'd like you to use it so they can mine all your data, show you ads, etc. Why would they want to provide you with an email client that would get set to other mail servers as much or more often then their own? Therefore, it's being pushed out of the nest on its own to find its own funding or wither and die. [more]

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QUIT [That's enough SMTP jokes -Ed.]

And finally...

• When GPS turns bad

Buffer overflow:

• Paul Browne: Business Users Creating Rules - BRMS Guide Preview (JBoss Drools)
• Direct2Dell: The Truth About DisplayPort vs. HDMI
• Joel Hruska: Windows Server 2008 will ship with SP1 installed
• GMSV: World’s richest man to pitch free software program at one of wealthiest universities in country
• The Open Sourcerer: Microsoft’s Jihad - Be afraid. Be very afraid…
• Data Center Knowledge: Sun Preps Cloud Platform to Vie With Amazon

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Mike Elgan: HP's new OmniBook?
• Martin MC Brown: Via Unveils 1-Watt x86 CPU
• Seth Weintraub: Apple outsources its server storage to Promise Technologies
• Mark Hall: Kerio bridges Windows, Linux and Macs
• Preston Gralla: A preview peek at Windows 7 screenshots
• Douglas Schweitzer: Don't just forward bogus emails
• Shark Tank: Well, somebody's now a lot less secure
• Shark Bait: Never turn it off...

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You too can pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• WiMax across U.S., thanks to Intel cash (and geekTunes)
• Has Blu-ray won? HD-DVD R.I.P.? (and souvenir potpourri 2)
• SCO zombies climb out of grave (and virtualize-or-die)