> These services come with real costs, especially storage and bandwidth. Charging for them helps ensure that users who benefit from these tools help cover their cost, instead of donors footing the bill.
This is the best way to monetize the extra sevices imo.
I really hope this takes off well and provides some funding for the Thunderbird project too. Currently the only way to monetarily support Thunderbird is through donations (https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/ ).
I find this totally reasonable. I think it's a good way to fund open source. I just hope this doesn't create any perverse incentives to make self hosting harder than necessary
I wonder if there's a plan to prevent the spam/malware/csam issues of the previous iteration of Send. Maybe that it's a paid service will help stop that?
I hope we'll see them set up as an Identity Provider for oAUTH/SAML/OpenID/whatever other stupid plethora of single-sign-on protocols there are. It's disappointing to always see Facebook and Google for single-sign-on providers, never a privacy-respecting OSS org.
The Thunderbird Pro Add-on Repo [1] doesn't really make it clear - if I want to self host Appointment and Send, do I need to build the addon myself and change the endpoints? Or is there some kind of config?
I've used Thunderbird ever since it was released as a standalone mail client and like it - although it has sometimes been a rocky experience in the past. I use it now with Fastmail as my mail provider.
One thing I might be interested in is the "contacts" side of mail. In an effort to move away from too much Google, I ditched Google Contacts and host my own CardDAV using "Radicale" [0]. This works, and I also access it via DAVx on Android.
But would a CardDAV server be something worthwhile via Thundermail? Or perhaps too small a service itself? Maybe part of their scheduling tool "Appointment"? I might prefer having this hosted elsewhere than in my house.
> The upcoming email hosting service from Thunderbird will support IMAP, SMTP and JMAP out of the box
Ahh, will Thunderbird finally see full JMAP support? Hooray!
For the self-hosters (other than those using Stallwart):
Cyrus does, of course, support JMAP (it's what Fastmail uses); Dovecot has apparently no interest / no manpower to really implement it themselves, but are willing to take a contribution[0].
One day I am going to configure Cyrus just for JMAP.
I actually really like this. Seems like a good way to sustain the platform. Everything is free and open source, so you can run all the services on your own if you want, but allows users to pay to outsource that work and get direct support. Sounds a lot like the Red Hat model, which has been successful. I also *absolutely love* how transparent they are about future development. It's nice to hear about what features are being prioritized and what are still in the planning phase. I wish this was more common.
I like that everything is optional. Nothing is forced on people. I know Mozilla gets these complaints a lot and while there is some validity to them it's not like this also isn't true about any other platform... Plus, most complaints are about optional things...
I'd love to see integration with Relay[0]. I already use this as it is a big help to reduce spam. Integrate with bitwarden and I can give every website a unique email and password. I hate that this is a thing that needs be done, but it is a big help and worth 2 beers a year.
I've actually always been surprised more people don't use Thunderbird. It's got problems, but I've had fewer problems with it than GMail, Apple Mail, or Outlook. Some "features" on those platforms even feel hostile[1]. Hell, just the filtering capabilities make a massive improvement[1]. I mean there's of junk mail I catch this way that none of the other services do. I'm all for advanced spam filtering but come on, if I can catch it with "[To or CC] + [contains] + [<name>]" then you've done fucked up[3].
[1] I never understood how people fall for those Paypal bitcoin scams until I saw one of those emails on my iPhone (and then checked Apple Mail to see if it was the same). Straight up rendered the PDF in browser giving no indication that it was a PDF and not text (GMail doesn't do this). I mean I don't have a Paypal account but I could see how my grandma could fall for that. Plus, they hide the addresses where in thunderbird this is much more apparent.
[2] One favorite filter is those "logged in from a new device". I get the toast notification on my machine (which I want) but it gets pushed to another folder so doesn't litter my inbox. Similar idea for other things like newsletters and email that borderlines junk (or is literal junk and hard to capture).
[3] These are LLM generated emails where the source is drastically different from what renders. Google support just told me to click "Report Spam" despite me telling them I've been doing that for a year and get these emails a few times a month...
18 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 35.0 ms ] threadThis is the best way to monetize the extra sevices imo.
https://www.thundermail.com/
I really hope this takes off well and provides some funding for the Thunderbird project too. Currently the only way to monetarily support Thunderbird is through donations (https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/ ).
Is there any email hosting out there with support for JMAP?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43560885 ("Mozilla launching “Thundermail” email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365 (techradar.com)"—4 months ago, 341 comments)
[0]: https://www.omglinux.com/major-thunderbird-redesign-early-lo...
[0] https://gitlab.com/timvisee/send
1. https://github.com/thunderbird/tbpro-add-on
One thing I might be interested in is the "contacts" side of mail. In an effort to move away from too much Google, I ditched Google Contacts and host my own CardDAV using "Radicale" [0]. This works, and I also access it via DAVx on Android.
But would a CardDAV server be something worthwhile via Thundermail? Or perhaps too small a service itself? Maybe part of their scheduling tool "Appointment"? I might prefer having this hosted elsewhere than in my house.
[0] https://radicale.org/v3.html
Ahh, will Thunderbird finally see full JMAP support? Hooray!
For the self-hosters (other than those using Stallwart):
Cyrus does, of course, support JMAP (it's what Fastmail uses); Dovecot has apparently no interest / no manpower to really implement it themselves, but are willing to take a contribution[0].
One day I am going to configure Cyrus just for JMAP.
[0]: https://dovecot.org/mailman3/archives/list/dovecot@dovecot.o...
I like that everything is optional. Nothing is forced on people. I know Mozilla gets these complaints a lot and while there is some validity to them it's not like this also isn't true about any other platform... Plus, most complaints are about optional things...
I'd love to see integration with Relay[0]. I already use this as it is a big help to reduce spam. Integrate with bitwarden and I can give every website a unique email and password. I hate that this is a thing that needs be done, but it is a big help and worth 2 beers a year.
I've actually always been surprised more people don't use Thunderbird. It's got problems, but I've had fewer problems with it than GMail, Apple Mail, or Outlook. Some "features" on those platforms even feel hostile[1]. Hell, just the filtering capabilities make a massive improvement[1]. I mean there's of junk mail I catch this way that none of the other services do. I'm all for advanced spam filtering but come on, if I can catch it with "[To or CC] + [contains] + [<name>]" then you've done fucked up[3].
[0] https://relay.firefox.com/
[1] I never understood how people fall for those Paypal bitcoin scams until I saw one of those emails on my iPhone (and then checked Apple Mail to see if it was the same). Straight up rendered the PDF in browser giving no indication that it was a PDF and not text (GMail doesn't do this). I mean I don't have a Paypal account but I could see how my grandma could fall for that. Plus, they hide the addresses where in thunderbird this is much more apparent.
[2] One favorite filter is those "logged in from a new device". I get the toast notification on my machine (which I want) but it gets pushed to another folder so doesn't litter my inbox. Similar idea for other things like newsletters and email that borderlines junk (or is literal junk and hard to capture).
[3] These are LLM generated emails where the source is drastically different from what renders. Google support just told me to click "Report Spam" despite me telling them I've been doing that for a year and get these emails a few times a month...