I’m pretty unhappy with Mozilla these days for a number of reasons. For one thing I don’t really see any improvements in Firefox anymore that would matter to me. Then there’s a lot of soul searching going on at the moment that has culminated recently in some cloudy talk about the Internet of Things and that Mozilla’s wants to have a role in that domain. Makes me wonder what that might be… To have enough time to think about that it seems they have binned their work on Firefox OS. And, to make things even worse, their Thunderbird email client and online calendar solution has become the unwanted step child to want to get rid of as soon as possible.
I’m especially unhappy about their attitude towards Thunderbird because it is the cornerstone for many who want to download their email on the PC and deal with it in the cloud. Also, Thunderbird is my desktop client for my Owncloud calendar I synchronize across my different devices. So I would expect Mozilla to keep actively developing the software instead of just having it in maintenance mode and trying to get rid of it.
The best way to tell Mozilla this might be to donate specifically for Thunderbird rather than to Mozilla as an organization. They haven’t made it easy to find the donate page that is specific for Thunderbird, as on the main Mozilla page that advertises Firefox but says nothing about Thunderbird anymore you can only donate for Mozilla. On the separate Thunderbird main page there even isn’t a donate button. Only when you click on the feature link will you find a donate link in the fine print at the end of the page. And even that one leads to the Mozilla donate page rather than a Thunderbird specific donate page. So if you want to donate to Thunderbird specifically you have to look elsewhere, for example to the FAQ page on Mozilla’s Thunderbird Wiki page. To me that means that they don’t want to you to donate specifically to the Thunderbird development and are actively hiding the page. Shame on you again, Mozilla!
But I won’t be deterred by all this hide and seek and donate anyway, not to Mozilla in general but ONLY to Thunderbird in Mozilla, because I want them to think about the importance of Thunderbird and I want them to give the software more focus again. It might not be sexy but it’s to cornerstone for many people that like free and open software for their email and calendar needs!
(via Bitblokes)