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Yeah I found it tough to keep reading after that golang line. What an absolutely unhinged thing to imply.

While I maybe self-servingly agree that mozilla could stand to focus more on the power-user market segment, this article feels more like a low-effort ramble than any kind of real investigation into what the modern org's actual focus is vs what it should/could be.

I was not implying it. I was attempting to rebut a common implication.

“Golang” used to be a google-endrosed synonym for Go; the official domain was golang.org for a while.

Yes but nobody capitalizes the L

Sigh.

Article author here.

> Really dumb aside that shouldn't have made it past the editor

Why? It was 100% intentional and the reason I included it is that I have often seen this raised as an alleged reason for Mozilla not more aggressively competing with Google, notably here on HN.

I don't believe it for a minute. That is specifically why I said "surely not".

> (not least of all because of the insane rendering of "GoLang").

"golang" is one of its official names and that is because the bare word "go" is open to misinterpretation and is hard to Google. The caps were merely for emphasis, and also, interCaps help screen-reader users.

> This overstates Mozilla's involvement in Thunderbird. The relationship is basically ceremonial at this point.

[Citation needed]

> The way this is written makes it sound like there was a delay to fulfill the promise.

There was.

> In reality, it only took 2 months for Netscape to publish source code. It took another four years for them to decide to scrap the old code and undertake a rewrite that culminated in the release a 1.0 of a different product line which the author refers to here.

Arguably true but, I submit, tangential to the actual point. The decision to O/S it being the same time as the Netscape 5 rewrite was a deeply stupid idea, but also understandable.

However, it was some 25 years ago now, so I didn't and don't think it merits more than a single-line passing mention and was not -- and is not -- worth this level of hair-splitting.

I'm not going to bother responding in depth, since it's evident that that will be fruitless. This, for example, is a good indicator:

> Arguably true but

There's nothing arguable about it. It's simply "true".

[[Citation needed]]

I mean this is ancient history and I really don't know why you are so bothered about it, but as I recall, Netscape was unwilling and unable to open the source code for 3.x or 4.x and so rather than spend all the time and effort to clean it up for publication, it chose to rewrite it.

So, as I said: the reasoning was unfortunate but understandable.

> I really don't know why you are so bothered about it

Drop the ad hominem if you want to have a serious discussion. (In the future, that is. We won't be having a discussion here, for the reasons stated. You can email me if you want, but I'm going to impose a mandatory 1-month delay for reflection and require a simple affirmation that the purpose will be a genuine attempt to develop the facts rather than "winning" the conversation. Changing the subject, diverting attention with weak attempts at petty retorts, etc. are going to be strictly off-limits.)

There was no ad hom in my reply, and I don't feel any need for further argument, thanks.

My article had plenty of references and citations for the points I wanted to make. If you wish to falsify it, then you need to reply with your own citations. You have yet to do so, and what you claim are significant issues are, AFAICS, trivial cavils.

My God you sound completely insufferable. I hope for your relatives sake you only say shit like this online

<https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments>

Thunderbird is maintained by a company that is fully owned by the Mozilla Foundation. How is that "ceremonial"?

I can't answer that question without understanding why you think the relationship you're describing necessarily makes it one that isn't ceremonial (which is what you seem to be implying). You go first.

I don't understand. If you think a fully owned subsidiary can have a "basically ceremonial" to the parent foundation, then what kind of relationship would be "not ceremonial"?

For what it's worth, Firefox is also developed by a fully owned subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation. Do you also think the relationship between Firefox and Mozilla is "basically ceremonial"?

> If you think a fully owned subsidiary can have a "basically ceremonial" to the parent foundation, then what kind of relationship would be "not ceremonial"?

One in which the latter's involvement with the former (including influence on and influence from) amounts to substantially more than letting one use the other's name. The relationship between Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation, for example, is not merely ceremonial.

> For what it's worth, Firefox is also developed by a fully owned subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation. Do you also think the relationship between Firefox and Mozilla is "basically ceremonial"?

No.

I'm still not sure what you want to express. The CEO of MZLA technologies is appointed by, and reports to the Mozilla board of directors. Of course the Mozilla Foundation has influence on the Thunderbird project. Moreover, the employees of MZLA join Mozilla's yearly "all-hands", together with everyone else working for Mozilla. The progress of the Thunderbird project is reported at Mozilla monthly internal meetings. I have a hard time understanding what else you'd expect to call the relationship "not ceremonial". MZLA Technologies and the Mozilla Corporation are different, but their relationship to the foundation is rather similar.

Are you involved with Thunderbird (or Firefox) in any way? Alternatively: have you polled for the opinions of longtime contributors?

Yes, I'm an employee of Mozilla Corporation, and I'm involved with Firefox backend services (some of which are also used by Thunderbird).

All right. That makes things weirder.

So, have you taken the temperature of a representative set of Thunderbird contributors?