This page is a work in progress, mostly by Kent James. I would love your contribution, but please make comments on the discussion page rather than editing this text directly

tl;dr

Thunderbird is important because it is ad-free, respects your privacy and follows the Mozilla values of openness. It's also free and open-source. Today, Firefox provides only minimal subsidy to Thunderbird so we need your money to keep Thunderbird working and make it work better with the Internet of today and tomorrow.

Introduction

• We are reaching out to users, describing where we have been, where we are going, and asking for your help

If you are watching this, you are probably a user of the Thunderbird email client. We're speaking to you today from a meeting of the volunteer contributors who keep Thunderbird alive. In this video, we’d like to tell you what's been happening lately with Thunderbird, and ask for your help.

Why Thunderbird is important

• Free
• Ad-free and private
• Mozilla values

Thunderbird is proud to be part of Mozilla, a non-profit organization dedicated to an open internet. While Mozilla's Firefox helps ensure an open web, Thunderbird is dedicated to defending open, private, and secure internet communications. And, like all Mozilla products, it’s free and open source.

Threat to open communications

Unfortunately we see a slow erosion of open, secure, and private communications. Some popular internet sites promote messaging that only their users can access. Others rely on ads for revenue, so your private communications are analyzed to better sell you as a product to advertisers. In a post-Snowden world, there are serious concerns about the actions of governments.

We fight for your freedom. Users should have a choice. We are determined to keep Thunderbird ad-free, secure, and relevant in a changing internet.

How Thunderbird is developed and supported (the transition to community ownership)

• Firefox now provides only minimal subsidy to Thunderbird

Freedom is not free, somebody has to pay the bills. Several years ago, Thunderbird had a significant paid staff, subsidized by Firefox. But Firefox needs to focus on its own issues, and now volunteers are responsible for supporting and improving Thunderbird. Thunderbird's security and stability is critical to millions of users, but it is hard for a small group of unpaid volunteers to provide the quality, features, and reliability that our users expect. We believe we need a small team of dedicated paid staff, working alongside our volunteers, to respond to urgent issues, keep Thunderbird secure and reliable, and move forward with new features.

Improvements we would like to make

• Contacts: user interface, open protocols, syncing to cloud
• Fix bugs that users tell us are important (can we come up with a list of top issues?)
• Improve reliability of updates and new releases

We've already received a lot of input from users on where Thunderbird could be better. Our Address Book needs to reliably sync with modern cloud-based contact systems. There are too many old bugs that need fixing. We would really like to move those things forward.

Importance of getting user input

• We want to hear from YOU what is important for us to focus on
• Survey of contributing users
• Executive Council members from user-facing support and qa communities

We are determined to move Thunderbird forward through a closer partnership with our users. We need to better understand our users, so that we address the issues that are most important to you. Thunderbird users who support us will be asked to give us input in a survey on what issues are most important to them. We've created an Executive Product Council to oversee Thunderbird direction, and included several people on that council whose primary interaction is with users, either in support or bug reports. We're open to other ways to hear from our users, so if you have any ideas or comments please contact us.

Why Thunderbird requires continual effort just to stay secure and reliable

• Can we give a count of security fixes last year, maybe including a list of issues that users may have heard of?

Significant parts of the code for Thunderbird are shared with Firefox. This means that security efforts to keep Firefox safe, also keep Thunderbird safe. But it also means that the hundreds of developers that are improving Firefox sometimes cause issues in Thunderbird that our small team of developers needs to fix. Add to that changes in email providers, and changes to operating systems. Just keeping Thunderbird current and secure takes a lot of time and effort.

People and their roles.

Each person will, in a few sentences (in English and in their native language), describe:

• Who are you (name, where you come from)?
• What do you do for Thunderbird?
• Why are you involved with Thunderbird?
• What would you like to see improved with Thunderbird?
• Ask the listener (possibly in your own words), "Will you join with us to make a better Thunderbird?"

Sample:

Hi. I'm Kent James, also known as rkent, from Redmond, Washington. I work mostly in C++ backend issues in Thunderbird, fixing bugs and crashes, and reviewing code. I also do the ExQuilla addon that adds Microsoft Exchange server support to Thunderbird. I originally got involved with Thunderbird to help update my programming skills after years in management, but I stay because I believe that personal communications should be private, and not dominated by ad-supported vendors. I'm trying to do my part to make Thunderbird better, will you also join with us?

Call to action

Most other email clients are commercial, so that either you pay for the product, or someone else is paying for access to you. We don't charge for our product, or sell your private data to others, but we will have bills to pay, and need a few staff to move forward. Thunderbird must be self-sufficient financially to remain viable. Can you help us by making a small contribution to keep Thunderbird free, relevant, and vibrant?