Calendar is a pet of mine. I still use Sunbird as it's the best Windows calendaring client. I do not want my calendar tied to an email client, I want it to have its own window, it's nice and lightweight. I'd like them to be able to speak to each other the same way Firefox and email clients can speak to each other.
Calendar data is very personal and we've allowed google to corner that market, even though we had great software before they launched. I have my own webdav set up on my own hosting, but because of smartphones, I still have to pass this info through google (or switch over entirely) to access the data on mobile. I think the sync mechanism built for Firefox could be used to sync ics subscriptions (so I don't have to keep setting up all my calendars on multiple machines). I don't use sync for Firefox, but I would use it for calendars. I don't know if calendar info is lightweight enough for us to offer complete calendar sync like we do with bookmarks etc. I think the timing is also good to talk about this, FirefoxOS will need calendaring capabilities. Maybe this is already being talked about in some corners? On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:07 AM, Andi Ye <[email protected]> wrote: > I have been directed towards this forum as the appropriate place to share > a concern and request action. > > Mozilla is currently appealing for donations on its Google homepage, even > though we see that it had a net income (what commercial companies would > call "Net Profit") of US$21.6 million in 2011 (source: Wikipedia), 600+ > employees (source: Wikipedia) to develop its small handful of applications > and a huge, expensive headquarters in the heart of silicon valley, just > down the road from Google's HQ (source: Google Maps). I do not see the > incentive for the Public to give private donations to an organisation with > this kind of balance sheet, particularly in view of the other governance > issues. > > Mozilla is often very slow to respond to the changing marketplace, in > spite of the support and input from a large and supportive user base. The > result is very clear: a fall of 28% in its own market share of its Flagship > Firefox product in the past five years (source: gs.statcounter.com: > 1-(Nov08 18.15/Nov13 25.23)). In purely anecdotal terms, almost all my IT > colleagues have migrated to Google Chrome browser - event with significant > privacy misgivings - because of features, speed and reliability. > > Mozilla's response to loss of market share seems to have been to throw all > development resources at Firefox, and leave its other products to whither > on the vine. Furthermore it seems to have taken for granted the immense > dedication from add-on developers who have been in no small part > responsible for Mozilla's early user-base and financial success. > > I offer this case as an example: > > Mozilla Thunderbird aimed to be an alternative to Microsoft Outlook. It > could never hope to achieve that without the Calendar functionality > provided by Lightning, and yet the maximum funding the project has ever > received from Mozilla is a solitary developer, long since withdrawn. > > I hardly need to make the point that IT markets develop and the whole > industry plays follow-my-leader in providing popular functionality. One of > the effects of the rise of smart-phones and tablets is that importing .ics > files to add calendar appointments has become a web standard. An > application which users allow to open their .ics files wins a similar prize > in their area to a browser accorded "Default Browser" status. But *seven > years* after such a feature request was added, the absence even of > Mozilla's support for the Lightning project means even the functionality > itself is not even in the developers' shortlist. > > It's a poor state of affairs when an organisation fails to support the > major pillars of its own success, throws all its magnificent resources at > one product which continues to haemorrhage support for reasons migrating > users are happy to provide; and then requests public donations to support a > bloated and unresponsive organisation with no plan to meet their needs. > > Is there any willingness to address this issue? > _______________________________________________ > governance mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
