Thunderbird/BYOB

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Background:

  1. see byob.mozilla.com
  2. Many organizations distribute Thunderbird to their users.  For many of them, the stock configuration isn't the best, and they'd like to make some fairly small but important modifications, to fit in their environment. This page is about a project which would let us have a version of "byob" for Thunderbird.  There are a few key requirements:
    1. The customizations must respect the branding guidelines, and the end result can still be called Thunderbird.  In particular, customizations which impact security and user experience can't be called Thunderbird.
    2. Obviously, meet enough of the needs of the target users, in this case "distributors" (in particular sites like universities, SMBs, and ISPs)
    3. From a code complexity and management POV, we want to limit the "surface area" of the customizations so that we can afford to maintain that API.


We'll do baby steps:

Step 1: minimal port of BYOB to work with Thunderbird, without adding any new kinds of customizations

Step 2: get feedback from target users about what other kinds of customizations they need.

Step 3: implement the most critical ones

Step 4: roll out to a larger group, and iterate.

Step 1

  • identify what customizations are most important:
    • Start page URL ?
    • Which of a select few add-ons to bundle by default
      • Which are the select few?
      • Lightning (link?)
      • Compact Header (link?)
    • What prefs to tweak by default [TBD]
      • LDAP prefs?
  • build an extension for Thunderbird that does the equivalent of Firefox's distribution.js
  • factor out the BYOB code to make a "sister site" on mozillamessaging.com that works for Thunderbird pretty much like it works for Firefox.

Step 2

Figure out what Thunderbird-specific customization vehicles need to be added: e.g. ISPDB config files.

Notes

I think it makes organizational sense for Mozilla Messaging to be responsible for running the service on our servers.  I see this working kinda like we run our own version of Sumo, many of the build tools, etc.  We don't want to get in the way of MoCo's Firefox-centric effort, and would be contributing resources towards the common codebase.

Questions

What are the benefits of having the equivalent of distribution.js code in Thunderbird, if we can do the same w/ an extension?