I really think open source projects should adopt a more financially sustainable model to have the ability to pay developers working full time on them. Like, maybe charge for enterprise use cases or using for than 10 email addresses for example /or additional features that mainly larger corporate users would need.

In the meantime, the best thing to help Thunderbird I can think of is for all of us to donate whatever we can:

give.thunderbird.net

I don't mind donating more than 5 bucks here and there, but first i think TB team needs to setup UserVoice like page where users can add suggestions of what they want and vote for what to be done first with priority, and after we see the first 1-2 rounds of suggestions coming alive and we see that devs are hearing the users, then i think donations will come naturally. Otherwise i feel like i don't know what donations will be used for. I don't know the TB roadmap or their plan and if this plan and changes is something i need or approve. I also don't think limiting the software for payment in anyway will do it any favor, it will just push users to go buy some other client.

I was going to say most of what you mention will be in the next version, but I feel now I have to address what I see as particularly unrealistic expectations.

Boby said

I don't mind donating more than 5 bucks here and there,

It takes a lot of cups of coffee to build software. Seriously if every Thunderbird user paid $5 a year the project would be in much better financial shape. Lack of money is a constant issue, one you are apparently not in a position to help remedy.

but first i think TB team needs to setup UserVoice like page where users can add suggestions of what they want and vote for what to be done first with priority,

1. An enhancement request system exists. Most folks want their changes so little the don't use it because it requires them to invest a little of themselves into the process. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home instead they make posts in a user support forum where they are ignored, then they complain no one listens. Perhaps they should have inquired how to request a change if they did not know.

What most folks simply do not appropriate is, it is customer service/relations that run feedback pages, not developers or managers. If a single topic becomes too frequent, they will take action to request a change, or more frequently modify materials to manage user expectations to reduce the requests. Things like release a statement about the need for users to read the manual before requesting changes. In other words, manage the users, not really respond to the actual feedback.

2. Bugzilla has a voting system where users can vote for the bugs they like. Up to a limit of around 1000 bugs. I see very little activity on that area, but I also see very little interest from developers in looking at votes either. They have their own personal agenda in many cases.

Open source is like that, if you are volunteering your time as a developer, you work on the bugs that are important or relevant, or interesting to you. Or you work on the bugs that are important to your employer, if they are paying you to work on an open source project. For instance Pretty Easy Privacy paid for a developer on Thunderbird. He worked for them, not the module owners. Guess what? Built in encryption will be in the next release. You might not want it, you may even denigrate it's inclusion. But someone put their money up.

3. Priorities without understanding of the work required and complexity are worth nothing. If you do not have a detailed understanding of the technical details you have no idea if the change is small like 2 lines of code to display the amount of money you have contributed, or requires someone to rewrite the entire donation and contributions database and build external hooks so the application can actually access the information, and then add two lines of code to display it. The number one reason for software projects failing in business/enterprise is the user expectations of what will be delivered rarely even resemble the work order. So the users never see their round of desired feature emerge.

I see lots of statements in support from people that really have no idea what they are asking, who expect either a quick response of "we will get right on it for you" or they ask for instance "why did my addon break?" they also expect a short sharp answer with a we will get right on it in response. What is a fact is that a largish book could be written, just with the for and against arguments that were had over allowing the addon to break or not. Along will all other that were not updated in Version 68.

That is without the detailed technical analysis that went into trying to prevent it in the first place and the angst about not being able to support "XYZ technology" any longer due to a lack of resources. Then I see comments like this

and after we see the first 1-2 rounds of suggestions coming alive and we see that devs are hearing the users,

then i think donations will come naturally.

Thankfully they are coming from folks that support the project in general and are just happy it is getting back on track after being left in the lurch so to speak by the departure of Mozilla. Otherwise it would have disappeared as an option some years ago and there would be one less option other than Microsoft.

Otherwise i feel like i don't know what donations will be used for.

You are on a web site. The bandwidth, servers and site maintenance is not free. The web site thunderbird.net is not free, it has someone running the servers and overseeing the site as well as addons.thunderbird.nert and developer.thunderbird.net. All of the ancillary infrastructure, web site and bandwidth actually needs paying for before you chosen "feature" because it is required to keep the project running. No project, no need for new features. You will not "see" anything for this expenditure, but it is necessary.

The free download is monetized by donations, not selling personal information as is the case with facebook and twitter and all the rest of social media.

I don't know the TB roadmap or their plan

You could have asked! See http://lists.thunderbird.net/pipermail/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net/2019-November/002024.html

and if this plan and changes is something i need or approve.

You are one of millions. You either contribute or not, use the product or not. But your approval as such is not needed. Your financial support for the project to have a future is.

Module owners in the project get to decide what is approved because they understand the technical requirement of changes. The elected council oversees the whole project. The project is a democratic group, but experts are empowered to make the decisions in their field of expertise.

I also don't think limiting the software for payment in anyway will do it any favor, it will just push users to go buy some other client.

That was the general consensus of the project members some years ago when we looked at how to pay the bills with Mozilla taking their bat and ball and leaving in 2012. It was felt it went against the open source credo, but seriously. If you don't want to contribute don't. But please don't take the time of those that are.

A subscription model was heavily promoted. Like proprietary software. Pay your annual subscription or not have a license to run the software. This had a number of proponents. Most of that discussion is on the same planning mailing list as the road map. Just years further into the past.

Oh and Rasheed. The ones least likely to contribute are those using the software for business. They are looking for something for nothing. The guys at Redhat, found the way to make them pay is make them pay for support.

> Are there any plans to modernize Thunderbird any time soon?

A user experience developer was hired in the past year, which means some great improvements will be coming in the next version 78 in a few months. But perhaps not all your needs in that version - there's much more to be done for the version after 78.

> ability to work in background mode or at least system tray,

That's really not a productivity feature, although some people seem stuck on the idea that it is. Anyway, system tray for Windows users is now in beta and will appear in version 78.

> better notifications (or use windows ones).

What specific aspects of notifications?

First of all, i appreciate the time you take to replay and explain, i really do and i thank you for that. With that said, i agree on somethings and i don't on others.

I don't want to argue, i just want to put my input as user of TB in case anyone that matter sees it. I don't want to criticize how things are done or anything like this, i am trying to help as power user and with my exp working with users, studding user's behavior and design for many years in terms of UI/UX

I work as web developer and UI/UX from 17 years, so i think i know about development processes at least on smaller projects (not on TB scale ofc).

Let me tell you this, before i post here, i looked where i can submit my opinion and suggests, i did not find https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home but even if i did, there is no were where it said that its for suggestions, the word appear no were, and if 17+ year experienced web dev can't figure it out, what do you expect from the users? This is just not user friendly form suggesting anywhere that you could make suggestions, all it says all over the place is bugs. Suggestions and feedback are not bugs.

The same goes for the roadmap, its full of technical stuff that most users don't care and won't bother read, while its good to have one like this, you need a user friendly version, when you say what features will come and how are they helpful in plain user language with visualizations. As a web dev i can tell you that presentation form of the information is of critical importance.

About the donations and priorities, what i wanted to say really is, that i think there is lack of good communication between devs and users, you need a place where users say what they want and vote for top wanted features, and devs can have their inputs of how realistic and easy/hard to do is, so users know what to expect is coming or not coming. I use TB for over 10 years, and for the features that matter to me, i see nothing done, what that means is that either devs don't care, or they don't really know what their users want, and that's where my suggestions are, to improve this and know what the users wants and need. 10+ years are enough time to see how fast the project is moving in the right (for me) direction, ofc this could and hopefully would change.

I recently spend 65 euro and bought mailbird, why? because it does everything that i need and want that TB don't and it does it now. I would happily donated this amount to TB if i see and know that my needs are coming in TB anytime soon.

Tell me, are the dev team know why i spend 65 euro on mailbird and not donating them to TB, and what my need are? No, is there a place where i can say that and they will see ? No There is not even a feedback form, those forums are only a support forums, you said it yourself. So when i say i want to know what I'm donating for, that's what i mean, i feel like users opinion don't matter, as there is not even a proper place where i can place my feedback and suggestions, and devs are after some own agenda. Even giants like Microsoft has voting feedback system, there is absolutely no excuse for open source software that relies on donations not to have one.

That's really not a productivity feature, although some people seem stuck on the idea that it is. Anyway, system tray for Windows users is now in beta and will appear in version 78.

One of the reasons to move to mailbird, i don't want active icon on my taskbar all the time only to use it when e-mail comes, i don't really care about system tray, i want the Tb to work in background mode, not being active on my taskbar all the time as i find it distracting, and i want to know when my e-mail arrive and open it then. Being active on my taskbar all the time really bothers me a lot. Every time i see it (countless times per day) sitting active on my taskbar i think "how hard is to make it work in background mode ffs".

What specific aspects of notifications?

Another reason i moved to mailbird

if i miss the notification (for example I'm not at the PC at the moment), there is no indication of it at all, like in windows system notification or in the taskbar icon (that i hate) badge, so you don't know that e-mail has come, this is failure of the notification as overall.

The design of them, for some reason regardless of what theme you use (dark or light) the notifications are always light. This is design inconsistency that i don't like.

another one, like how are folders for all accounts visible and when you have 10+ accounts with 15+ folders you have one giant folder pane that is getting confusing fast, in mailbird for example you see the folders only for currently selected account at time, much cleaner and better.

Another one: gmail spam folder always working weirdly in TB, it doesn't update properly and most of the time while i have 30+ spam messages there TB shows like they are zero.

Another one: when i receive message in inbox (in gmail) it marks it multiple times like (inbox, important, all mail and etc), its like you received 3-4 emails while its only one.

Another one: e-mail signatures, the font of it, the space between it, it always put some dash above it, you need some html customization and hacks to make it work as it should..

Another one: Not properly display messages in dark mode, compare them in TB and mailbird, you will see right away the difference.

Another one: I have setup TB for my mother, so she can check all her emails at one place, she never used it, she preferred to manually open Gmail in browser for each account and typing passwords etc and work there. Then i switched TB for Windows 10 mail for her, she is happy with it and use it daily. This speaks a lot, she is not a power user or anything, she just want something that its simple and not confusing to her and it works and notify her properly, so interface design and notifications and background mode here again.

Not to mention that with version 68 you broke the themes compatibility and there isn't a single custom theme compatible for over 2 years now.

I can go on and on and while most of those can be considered "small" things, when you combine them all it turns into a big one.

I'm really glad that you have hired UX designer i hope you improve all this. As you can see, even that i switched, i care about TB and come here even that is not the right place, and I take my time to try to give my input and help improve TB. Doesn't matter if you agree with me or not, its just my opinion, and i know that many users feel the same way, you should listen to users and try to improve and do what they need and ask for.

When i decided to switch from TB as the annoyances are too much for me after losing patience for over 10 years of usage, i tried all clients, windows mail, outlook, em client, mailbird, and i find the right one for me. As fan of Mozilla, i really do hope TB will be modernized and improved and i will happily come back.

re :i looked where i can submit my opinion and suggests, i did not find https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home but even if i did, there is no were where it said that its for suggestions, the word appear no were,

The bugzilla link you posted took me to the website home page. I clicked on 'New Bug' and selected 'Thunderbird' I typed some words and clicked on 'Find similiar issues' and was able to see if someone else had already mentioned the issue I was looking for. After all, if someone lse has reported an issue then I could say I wanted it as well. It did not exist, so I clicked on 'my issue is not listed'.

I was then able to describe the issue. I could select the version I was using and there was space to type all information. At the bottom I could select the option that this was 'This is a request for enhancement'.

Obviously I had to register to post the request.

Toad-Hall said

I clicked on 'New Bug' and selected 'Thunderbird'

Exactly, you lost me there, as i said, I'm looking for feedback and suggestion form not bugs.

At the bottom I could select the option that this was 'This is a request for enhancement'.

I'm sorry but that's hilarious :)

The feedback mechanism you are seeking doesn't exist.

I found your write up worth passing directly to a developer, which I did yesterday. So you needn't worry further.

re :hilarious :)

I agree with you. It does look like it is only for bugs initially, so not exactly intuitive. But if you want to use the system as it is then that is the current method. Fortunately, Wayne Mery is already onto this specific issue, so thanks for your input.

The feedback mechanism you are seeking doesn't exist. I found your write up worth passing directly to a developer, which I did yesterday. So you needn't worry further.

Thank you.

The feedback mechanism you are seeking doesn't exist. I found your write up worth passing directly to a developer, which I did yesterday. So you needn't worry further.

Thank you.

I'm responding because this thread came up in my support searches and it certainly is on point.

I've decided that it's the fundamental problem of free software. The author of free software isn't working for a paycheck he's (she's) working because he has enthusiasm for the project and a vision to promote. No matter how well the intentions at the beginning, ego always gets involved. As good as your suggestion may be, if it doesn't fit into the designer's vision then it's not a priority. Sometimes when a HUGE number of people ask/complain the designer will move on it, but I've seen time and again that if it's not in his vision it will even then get bare bones treatment.

Then there are committees. When Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo, a businessman was quoted as saying "So what? when a Committee flies the Atlantic, THAT will be news!" The committee gets together and decides that the calendars on my phone, Ipad, CRM and office schedule aren't enough and that my life will be barren unless my email client has yet another one. So I have one.

Meanwhile when I add a new mail account I get a screen that says "your settings are not correct, please correct your settings and try again" which is akin to "something is wrong. Fix something and then nothing will be wrong" The dialog exists between the client and the server, the error is RIGHT THERE but in order to access it I need 10 settings, 2 add-ons {which are not compatible with my update channel} , slaughtering a goat on the keyboard and buying a Oija Board. Because not that many people have errors connecting but everyone needs 4 calendars in their life. Change the font color in Word or Excel - one click. Change in T-bird, two sometimes three clicks ... not a priority.

Finally - and this is a big one - I'm not even sure that most suggestions and requests make it to the designers. Most of the forums are quite well guarded by what I call Application Sycophants that take anything like a complaint as some sort of personal offense and they fight back ferociously, even taking the side of the bug if that's what it takes.

I was aghast last week to find that two Thunderbird clients can't share one address book. Of course it can be done ... sharing via dropbox with an add-on or two {which aren't available for my release channel ...} but it's not built into the basic framework of the product because it doesn't fit the vision of the designers. It would be best if I used Thunderbird for what they want it used for and not what I want it used for.

I have to go now, my phone just told me that the calendar on my Ipad has a date conflict ...

re : address book Have a read of info at this link. https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/131182-create-soft-hard-symbolic-links-windows.html