Disclaimer: I haven’t read the article, my rant is entirely based on the title.
[a] Fork That Promises Better Features
Have they released anything yet? Or are we at the project stage, where they’re yelling at their CLI confused about git?
Promises are cheap, releases matter. I mean I could announce a project called Betterfox, promising to bring better features to a well-known browser. But in reality I’m by myself, overly ambitious, and going to leave the github page abandoned after the initial commit.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the article
A wise choice in this case. It’s 23 paragraphs that mostly describe standard Thunderbird features (as the author usually does not use email clients) and only one list with three (!) bullet points of new features in Betterbird.
Edit: to save you a click, here’s the list from the article (the actual feature list on the project page is longer):
Some notable features include:
- System Tray Icon (Linux)
- Accent Colors (for folders)
- Multi-line Inbox View (disabled by default)
This doesn’t really seem like something that needed to be done. Thunderbird already has too many features. It needs less, not more. A bunch of stuff in the email client part is also badly designed. That needs fixing, preferably upstream, but I wouldn’t think of that as feature enhancement.
In linux it doesnt have a tray with mail count that sends a notification when new mail arrives. It’s a pretty basic feature nowadays to be honest. It didn’t even have the auto fetch every 30 minutes when I switched!?!! Like Thunderbird expected me to click on the sync button every 30 minutes. That’s not how people use email I’m sorry.
I agree that all those calendar and contacts features are completely unnecessary and that it could integrate with other tools instead, but the main use is lacking.
I use TB under Debian and there is a tray icon and an arrival notification, poll time of maybe a few minutes, seems fine. Showing the # of messages in the tray icon could be sort of handy I guess, though I had never thought about it before and didn’t miss it. Basic features = shut off the “email contains remote content” banner or “spam filter thinks this email is spam” (I can recognize spam for myself). I just want a preference that permanently disables remote content without throwing banners at me. And eliminate the client side spam filtering completely since I have that on the server side, and can manually flag any that gets through. Plus various other stuff like that. Yes, get rid of the calendar and contacts stuff. Biggest feature needing significant code changes: make message search not suck.
I came here because of the clickbait title, ready to lambast thunderbird for the empty promises… But it turns out that they’re pretty clear on the specifics of what separates them from Thunderbird.
But I’m not gonna let that righteous indignation go to waste, so instead I’m gonma rip Sourav Rudra('s writing skill) a new one. Prepare your (writing skill’s) ass for a kicking Sourav.
Betterbird: A Thunderbird Fork That Promises Better Features
Better features?! Can I also have updated elements and improved aspects? Maybe superior components too??? Ah. A girl can dream.
Vague buzzwords and nothing more. “Better features” is not only subjective, but also vague enough to be almost entirely meaningless. Let’s hope the rest of the article does better.
Thankfully, the author included a shortlist of “Must-Know Bits.” I’m sure that’s a good summary of what’s to follow.
— Features many long-requested features.
I’m glad they’re finally listening to my request of compatibility with the Lovense remote control vibrator app’s API. Now I can feel good about receiving emails instead of stressed! They sure took their sweet time, it’s been
long[time units] since I requested it!How long and who requested? Or better yet, what features??? Why should I care??? Please, give me somethinbg concrete to grip onto!
— A more streamlined alternative to Thunderbird.
Streamlined! Wow! Is it also more efficient, and higher quality? Will they make it sustainable? Maybe it can also be more ethically sourved.
Could you be more vague please? This almost accidentally told me something about the changes they’ve made.
— Highly customizable, thanks to Add-ons and Themes.
Like Thunderbird? Like the addons you can find at the official Thunderbird site at addons.thunderbird.net?
Do they also plan to send and receive email in betterbird? Will it work with a graphical desktop environment? Will it be computer software? Or does the failure to mention these assumed “features” imply that it will diverge from Thunderbird in these key aspects?
Deeply shit lead-in. The rest of the article stands in stark contrast, being actually specific and informative. It’s like ol Sourav wrote an actually good article, then some idiot editor slapped it in ChatGPT and told it to fart out a title, subtitle, and highlights list. And then ChatGPT ignored all that and made the most generic tech article heading of all time.
FWIW, itsfoss.com: you should fire that editor for being a completely incompetent moron.
Thunderbird, and probably betterbird, is too bloated for my taste.
all you really need is a steady hand and a magnetized needle. kernel is bloat
The founder of this project says he created it because of “cancer culture” at Mozilla after he got banned from the thunderbird project for toxic and derogatory conduct. I’m good on that I’d rather stick to thunderbird thanks
Too lazy to look it up today maybe later. There has got to be a term for people who just can’t wait to point out whatever they deam as a social injustice to appear right about their choice or signal to others in a feeble attempt at taking the moral high ground. OSS is becoming more and more bogged down by people who spend more time on the politics and whether or not their feelings were hurt rather than the actual utility of the project. This is the equivalent of ‘you offended me and you should feel bad’ when you are the one being offended. Get over it. Stop trying to drag everything through the mud in perpetuity because somebody on the internet hurt your feelings.
Turns out nothing will live up to this standard over that timeline so maybe find a more constructive thing with your time.
All I want is Microsoft Exchange support (I didn’t choose to need it…)
Looking at the linked-from-the-“due to differences”-link emails… jesus christ… so that’s what people mean by Mozilla prioritizing greedy money…
If you read the developer’s background and reasons for the fork, it’s actually a lot more… cringe.
Pretty much, the guy lost his shit because Mozilla is woke / SJW / DEI and all the lovely buzz words used by certain people.
Got that vibe when he said he was ousted by weaponized cancel culture
Thanks for sharing this, looked into it myself and that’s quite unfortunate.
Why does every piece of cool software end up having some reactionary midlife crisis behind them?
That would make sense. I’d like some links.
Ngl that link puts me slightly off. It reads exactly like what people booted for very good reasons say
The following paragraph shows how so-called cancel culture was used weaponising […]
And in the email, Mozilla talks about him violating their “inclusivity” policy… we also don’t know what was reported, only the reasons stated.
Not saying that it wasn’t unjust, just that we only have 1 perspective and it’s written in a way that raises some red flags.
Pretty bad when one side’s perspective makes them look awful and the other side is the one accusing them of being awful 😬
I agree that I’d be very curious as to what the violations actually are, but…
- No specific instances of violations are referenced in the CPG emails
- There’s no language in the CPG emails regarding prior warnings
- Suspension from the council is clearly out-of-process
Mozilla doesn’t do loose coupling of UI and core, huh?
Direct link to said better features, for the lazy: https://www.betterbird.eu/#featuretable
Im lzy, ty
One bug that irks me is deleting an email on a folder with sorting such as grouped sorting and Thunderbird loses the sorting settings, then I have to reapply the sorting settings again…gah
I had no idea!
Wonder if any of that stuff will make it upstream and if not if there’s good reason?
As per the FAQ:
We will submit all changes to upstream to eventually benefit Thunderbird.
Is there a way to use this as a drop in replacement easily? Like maybe move my Thunderbird profile folder into a Bettterbord folder, or maybe an automatic import option?
This looks promising but I don’t really want to set up my email accounts and settings from scratch.
As per the FAQ they seem to share the exact same profile so you can seamlessly switch between them (provided both are the same dot release)
I just gave it a try and it does not pick up my existing Thunderbird data automatically, or prompt to import it.
Same here :(
Booooo
The instructions change if you’re using flatpak. I was only able to get it to work with a manual import
for TB -> TB-flatpack simply pasting from
~/.thunderbird/to~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/.thunderbird/did work for me. I might try betterbird sometime.I’m on Windows on this PC, so nothing being isolated here.
This is amazing. Thanks!
