Hello Mitchell, So I'd like to discuss some of the technical details in that "separation" because I don't completely understand them, it's probably only my fault. A few facts first:
1. Thunderbird is a standalone application embedding Gecko and deeply relying on XPCOM, XUL (and XBL), XUL-based add-ons and XULrunner. I need to mention that Postbox, a successful commercial MUA, is precisely in the same case. 2. Thunderbird's code is quite well isolated, and comm-central that hosts its core still needs to check mozilla-central out to build. Most of the work I'm doing for Postbox these days sits inside /mail and /mailnews, never /mozilla So here are my questions: a. all the underlying technologies of Thunderbird's world (XPCOM, XUL, XBL, XUL-based add-ons) are on the verge of being deprecated. Is the announced move a way to decouple faster, as it seems reading your bullet point 8? What other areas of Gecko will be "cleaned up" if that decoupling happens? This question is an absolutely major one because it will deeply impact the rendering engine's choice. b. Thunderbird will still need to embed a browser, even if it does not use any more XUL or XPCOM in the future. Embeddability of Gecko has always been a poor parent of the project. Will it change or should Thunderbird look for rendering engine alternatives? Technically speaking, I hope you will believe me when I say that despite of all existing issues, the editor living inside Gecko is still superior to all other editing engines on the market. Moving to another rendering engine will imply, for TB and any other application embedding a wysiwyg editor, a rather deep downgrade. Again here, embeddability is crucial. c. if a is true, then a very long list of third-party apps, like my own (BlueGriffon line) or Seamonkey, will be very deeply impacted. What about them/us? d. do you have any ETA or deadline? I suspect that a rewriting of TB w/o Mozilla technologies is a >=2 years effort for a team of 2 to 3. e. last but not least, and this is not a question but more a comment, Thunderbird is used by many governmental and non-governmental organizations around the globe even if they're less visible than Firefox's users. As a local example, many areas of the french government rely on it. Planning a future for TB will be crucial to them, but also crucial to Mozilla's image among these people. Best, </Daniel> _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
