Mozilla opens the doors on Messaging subsidiary
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Thunderbird is go The Mozilla Foundation has opened up a new subsidiary tasked with developing the Thunderbird email software package.â¦
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Mozilla should soon be experimenting with some novel user-interface technologies for its browser and other products, according to a UI developer that&#160;joined Mozilla this week from startup company Humanized.Aza Raskin, who until Wednesday was president of Humanized, a five-person startup in Chicago, is now user experience lead for the Mozilla Labs team, he said Thursday. He will be working on technology to let people &quot;do anything you want to do, anywhere, anytime on your computer,&quot; he said.Mozilla announced Wednesday that it had hired three of the principals from Humanized, which is known for its innovative work with the Enso project to create more intuitive user interfaces. Mozilla did not identify the people it hired, and Raskin was hesitant at first to say which of his colleagues had joined him at Mozilla. Eventually he acknowledged that Humanized&#39;s Jono DiCarlo and Atul Varma also have joined the company known for its Firefox browser.Enso user-interface software was designed to make it easier to perform daily tasks that require the use of multiple applications or functions. The software runs in the background and allows users to type in simple commands to access applications, instead of leaving the window or application they are in to use another one.For example, if a user wants to open Firefox from the current screen, instead of having to find the Firefox icon or go to the Start menu in Windows, Firefox can be opened by pressing the Caps Lock key and typing &quot;open firefox.&quot; Performing calculations and acquiring word definitions can be executed in a similar way from whichever window the user is in at the time.&quot;Those ideas need to be explored at Mozilla,&quot; Raskin said, though &quot;it&#39;s unclear yet what form that will take.&quot;He and his Humanized colleagues were attracted to Mozilla because the company &quot;has a lot of vision&quot; to extend the Web beyond the browser, he said. The Firefox browser remains the company&#39;s primary product for now, however, although it also offers the Thunderbird open-source e-mail client.Raskin said that many advances on the Web, in terms of online services and mashups, have been designed with the developer in mind, and because of that they run the risk of making the browser a mere delivery vehicle for streaming applications -- much like what the desktop has become. He aims to use technology and ideas from the Enso project to add more human interaction not just to the browser, but to anything people do on the Web itself.&quot;I want the power of mashups not in the hands of the developer but in the hands of end-users -- in the hands of your grandmothers and your teen-aged son,&quot; he said. &quot;So you really can be writing an e-mail and say, &#39;Now I want a map in there.&#39; Things like that -- a place where you can actually start having a conversation with your computer.&quot;Raskin said that most people, whether they know it or not, are captive to their computer -- they do their work on it or use it only in the way the computer allows, and have very little control over that interaction. The idea behind Humanized, and now the work Raskin and his colleagues will do at Mozilla, is to change that for everyone, not just people who know their way around a computer.Mozilla did not actually acquire Humanized, and Raskin said its Web site will be up for some time, but the company is effectively now part of Mozilla. He and his colleagues are working out which pieces of the Enso project will be relevant to their work at Mozilla, he said. Raskin posted on his blog about his new position.Of the remaining Humanized employees -- systems architect Scott Robbin and Treasurer Andrew Wilson -- only Robbin&#39;s next move is clear for now. Raskin said Robbin is running the company&#39;s music-search-engine project, Songza.&#160;
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Editor&#39;s Summary: The Mozilla Foundation has followed up on the recent success of its Firefox browser with a new open source e-mail client.
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(InfoWorld) - Mozilla spun off its Thunderbird e-mail client into a new for-profit subsidiary on Monday and seeded the unnamed company with $3 million in startup money, the open-source developer announced. The move is identical to the one made by the umbrella Mozilla Foundation in 2005 when it created Mozilla Corp. to manage Firefox. "The new organization doesn't have a name yet, so I'll call it MailCo here," said Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker on her blog Monday night. "Technically, it will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, just like the Mozilla Corporation." MailCo is the result of internal talks and public discussion aboutÂ the future of ThunderbirdÂ that began in July. Then, Baker, who also chairs the Foundation, said that because Firefox was Mozilla's first priority, it had to divest itself of Thunderbird. Among the options she outlined: Creating a new nonprofit organization similar to the Mozilla Foundation to focus on the e-mail program; building a new subsidiary of the foundation just for Thunderbird; and releasing Thunderbird into the wild as a community-only project. Scott MacGregor and David Bienvenu, the two Mozilla employees who headed Thunderbird development efforts, voted for the third option. Today, however, Mozilla chose the second. Most Thunderbird users blasted Baker and Mozilla for wanting to ditch the e-mail program, which competes with Microsoft's Outlook and IBM's Notes, as well as with Web-based e-mail services such as Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, and Google's Gmail. The new company will focus on developing communications software based on the current Thunderbird product, its code base and its brand. The goal is to create a community of developers, similar to the one already in place for Firefox, that's dedicated to working on Thunderbird and associated products. "We can spark the same kind of excitement and energy level and innovation [as with Firefox] in the email/communications space," Baker said. Among MailCo's out-the-gate goals, said Baker, are supporting existing Thunderbird users and creating "a better user experience for a range of Internet communications" that will explore how e-mail should work with other technologies such as RSS, instant messaging, VoIP, and SMS. David Ascher, the former chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at ActiveState Software, a Vancouver, British Columbia development tool maker, will lead the new company, said Baker in a statement. "David has been a respected member of the Mozilla community for many years and we're excited that he is joining Mozilla to lead this important effort." Ascher, also the director of the Python Software Foundation, has led Komodo, a Mozilla-backed, open-source development environment project. Less than two weeks ago, ActiveState debuted its Open Komodo Project, which will switch many of the company's already-free development tools to open-source. Mozilla was set to announce the new venture Tuesday morning, but moved up the news several hours to Monday night when Yahoo said earlier in the day that it wouldÂ acquire Zimbra,Â a privately held Web-based e-mail and collaboration provider, for $350 million. It's unknown whether Mozilla's current in-house Thunderbird developers will continue with the new company. Baker hinted that they may not. In her blog, she explained that the $3 million in seed money for MailCo will "be spent mostly on building a small team of people who are passionate about e-mail and Internet communications." Neither Thunderbird developer Scott MacGregor, who started the project in February 2003, or his co-worker, David Bienvenu, responded to a request for comment. ComputerworldÂ is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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The Mozilla Foundation today is set to release Version 1.0 of its Thunderbird e-mail client, an open-source application aimed at competitors, including Microsoft's Outlook Express and Qualcomm's Eudora.
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TechWeb - Boutique services company MozSource now offers e-mail technical support services for the Mozilla Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client.
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The open source Mozilla Foundation has released Thunderbird 1.0, an e-mail client, as a follow-up to last month's much-discussed debut of the group's Firefox 1.0 browser.
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Mozilla is working on a new application called 'Prism' which will help to blur the line further between applications for the web and the desktop.
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MozSource, the independent company that operates the Mozilla Store and the Netscape Store, has announced the launch of its new high-quality, affordable technical support service for Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla 1.7.
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The Mozilla Foundation has released version 1.0 of its Firefox browser, an open-source product that has generated lofty expectations that it will offer real competition to Microsoft&#39;s ubiquitous Internet Explorer.
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Thunderbird is go Mozilla plans to replicate the success of its Firefox web browser in the email and communication market with the creation of a new firm.â¦
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The Mozilla Foundation announced the release version of its new email client, Thunderbird today. Roughly a month after the Mozilla Foundation made history by launching the first mass market open source browser
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Mozilla earlier this week issued a public beta of the next version of its Thunderbird e-mail client. In addition, it said it was delaying a planned security update to Firefox for unspecified reasons.
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Mozilla appears to have another winner on its hands. Its free Thunderbird e-mail client reads e-mail from Web and POP accounts, accesses RSS feeds, and offers significant flexibility.
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Switch to Mozilla, says Office for Information Security
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Mozilla&#39;s new &quot;Lightning&quot; project will integrate Mozilla&#39;s calendar application, Sunbird, with its Thunderbird e-mail application, creating an application not unlike Microsoft Outlook.
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The company hopes the server software will help it move into unified messaging, where voice mail, e-mail and fax come together.