On 25/10/2020 06:33, Simon Walter wrote:
> On 10/25/20 7:20 AM, Mark Rousell wrote:
>>
>> The reason for this change is that Thunderbird is deprecating all its
>> old addons (the entire ecosystem) and Enigmail won't work on the new
>> Thunderbird. It's less than satisfactory.
>
> Yes, I understand the reasons. They may make sense for FF. Though, I
> don't know if they apply to TB.

I do not think they make sense for Thunderbird. Thunderbird was in
effect railroaded into it because it cannot part ways with whatever the
Firefox project does with Gecko (or whatever it's called now). I view
this as a bug, not a feature.

I understand that the Thunderbird project lacked resources to go its own
way (i.e. forking Gecko to be able to support their own addon ecosystem)
but I still view this as severely damaging to Thunderbird's future and,
as such, is a systemic problem. It is destroying one of Thunderbird's
USPs (i.e. fully capable addons).

> That's interesting and may be a good thing. I should do more
> investigation. I recommend TB to most of my clients. I want to make
> sure that is still a good recommendation.

I'm in the same position with respect to recommending to clients. I
think that Thunderbird is still a good recommendation pro tem but I do
not see this as a long term situation. I do not think that the current
leadership's direction is the right one in order for Thunderbird to be
able to maintain unique USPs over potentially competing mail and
calendar clients.

As an aside, I don't think that Firefox has a great future either. In
summary, it seems to me that it's being converted more and more into a
Chrome clone and if users have a choice between Chrome and a
Chrome-alike then they simply seem to choose Chrome. Firefox has lost
its USPs (not least its earlier fully-capable addon ecosystem), and
Thunderbird under its current leadership (and, I admit, with its current
resources) seems to be inexorably following.

So, I'm sticking with Thunderbird for now until I identify a better
alternative. The loss of the old addons ecosystem and, in particular,
the loss of Enigmail and replacement with a less capable internal
OpenPGP implementation were the final turning point for me (together
with planned UI changes that are not so appropriate in my opinion for
desktop use and with general project leadership quality).

The replacement (for me) for Thunderbird might not yet exist but I am
confident that something will emerge.

--
Mark Rousell