Thunderbird's future with a common base with Pale Moon?

[Marsu42]

Dear devs, Mozilla is abandoning legacy code (as you might have noticed ... and the Pale Moon guys have a project running to fork 2017-ish code for a common XUL plattform base called "UXP": https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=17634

Their first use of this platform is the "Basilisk" browser (http://basilisk-browser.org/features.shtml) but it has been made clear that the idea of UXP is to support multiple apps like Sunbird and whatnot. Thunderbird kinda comes to my mind there?

So how about it, why not bury the hatchet and work together sharing a common code base that is actively maintained by as many devs as possible? I'm using Thunderbird for ages an am fearful the missing Mozilla ressources will show sooner or later, esp. in ongoing "legacy" addon development.

[DanRaisch]

Moving to Third Party Builds as this post is not about Thunderbird Features.

[isaacschemm]

There was a discussion about this on the tb-planning group about 8-12 months ago. This was pre-Basilisk, but one of the main issues was the relatively small number of people working on Goanna, and I suspect that would still be an issue.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tb-planning/J7VTYa0pbms/AvC582UiEAAJ

[Marsu42]

Moving to Third Party Builds as this post is not about Thunderbird Features.

OK, I was not sure where to put it, the reationale was that preserving the xul code (Basilisk/UXP) is the base of all Thunderbird addon features :-o ... I hope interested peope will find it here.

There was a discussion about this on the tb-planning group about 8-12 months ago. This was pre-Basilisk, but one of the main issues was the relatively small number of people working on Goanna, and I suspect that would still be an issue.https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tb-planning/J7VTYa0pbms/AvC582UiEAAJ

Thanks a lot, I had no idea there was a Google group alongside this (or equialent) forums.

I connot really tell how much has changed with the introduction with UXP. To my understanding the Pale Moon dev wants to keep it alive by switching to this "One Unified XUL Platform to serve them all". The first implemenation is the Basilisk browser, Pale Moon will floow sooner or later (though keep the legacy UI and disable web extensions). Some unmaintainted products like Sunbird could be revived with the UXP base - though I personally doubt there's enough demand or dev power.

One the one hand, it would be a pity if the resources wouldn't be pooled, and Thunderbird doesn't need e10s and other innovations targeted at the Firefox browser. On the other hand, the nunmber of UXP devs could indeed be rather small. Last not least, my current participation in their forum indicates protective thinking by some members of their community - though this isn't my final assessent yet.

But probably it's too late anyway? I vaguely remember readding somewhere that the latest tb includes Rust technology, i.e. so much work has been done by now that switching to UXP isn't a realistic option anymore?

[frg]

> But probably it's too late anyway? I vaguely remember readding somewhere that the latest tb includes Rust technology, i.e. > so much work has been done by now that switching to UXP isn't a realistic option anymore?

Parts of Gecko are now rewitten in Rust. Thunderbird and SeaMonkey picks this up but so far not a single Rust file in the comm-central repository. Can stay this way if you just ask me

im is dead as far as I know. Chat is incorporated into TB itself and enhanced.

FRG

[Frank Lion]

So how about it, why not bury the hatchet and work together sharing a common code base that is actively maintained by as many devs as possible?

There never was any hatchet to bury.

As you saw here - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/t ... C582UiEAAJ what there is are guys who can code who don't rate that project at all. At a technical level, the Pale Moon project is just not that innovative or attractive a proposition to pursue further. It really is as simple as that.