No matter how much I hate Mozilla’s new path, companies like this challenging big tech are bold and have a lot of courage. If I set aside my personal op opinions about Mozilla, I actually admire them for this. They can actually dent big tech with funding from big tech itself.
I keep hearing a lot of negative comments about Mozilla lately. I’m wondering if this move is more in line with then just turning into another google rather than disrupting the marketplace.
yeah, might seem good to have yet another choice, but it’s an illusion
Google only checked out and cashed in after getting a monopoly. Mozilla let themselves fade into irrelevance.
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For now, they’re better than Google. I have some bad opinions about them, but anything better than Google competing with Google is an improvement.
Yeah it’s not even close.
…and then join the big tech at some point.
If this works out it might be a nice place to migrate to away from my self-hosted e-mail provided they eventually let you bring your own domain. Just sucks that e-mail is essentially the most secure thing you need to have since compromising that can compromise every account attached to the e-mail. That’s a lot of trust you need to instill in your e-mail host.
I have fond memories of self-hosting a qmail setup for a long time, then eventually migrating to a postfix configuration, back in the day.
Keeping up with spam filtering finally did me in.
The spam filtering is painful. I kinda work around it by giving a unique e-mail for everything and of one starts getting spammed I just rid of that e-mail. Tends to give you advance warning of data breaches too since you’ll start seeing the spam come in before the announcement.
You say you’re self hosting your email, how are you doing that?
I meant hosting wise, at home or using a VPS? How did you get a fixed IP/ what are you using for a proxy?
VPS, I wouldn’t run a mail server from my home network. If you go with mailinabox you don’t need to set up a proxy, it’s pretty simple.
Whatever their doing, it’s not worth it.
Eh it depends. I’m fortunate enough to be in a good IP block so I don’t get my e-mails dropped purely on that. It’s been a good learning experience and I’ve leaned on my own server a number of times for troubleshooting at work since I can see the whole mail flow. The only problem I have is the free Outlook/Hotmail will not accept my e-mails. Everybody else seems fine. All that said, I don’t host anybody else’s e-mail so I haven’t had any spam come out of my IP, and I would never in a million years host e-mail for a customer.
It’s a colocated server. I provided the physical server and they put it into a rack in a datacenter with power and networking (static IP).
I think it’s incredibly important that people know, with absolute certainty, whether or not the new Mozilla/Firefox privacy policy in any way applies to / covers such a service.
I’m not saying I know the answer- What I’m saying without a concrete, permanently applied answer it’s not even considerable.
There is no email service that exists without a terms of use and privacy policy. I still feel everyone overreacted about Firefox. It’s funnier how many people said they switched to Brave because of it and all the super shady stuff Brave has done.
at exists without a terms of use and privacy policy. I still feel everyone overreacted about Firefox. It’s funnier how many people said they switched to Brave because of it and all the super shady stuff Brave has done.
Being angry at the Mozilla foundation for those changes is understandable. Switching to Brave because of it is plain stupid.
I do think the brave devs or teams starting spreading the “switch to brave” as a growth hack. No right minded person would pick brave over ff. Maybe librewolf sure.
Firefox/Mozilla operated without any of the new additions for nearly the entire history of the internet until this year. If anything, “over”-reacting to the new policies was too weak a reaction. You do you and all, but I’ll agree to very strongly disagree.
You can’t know that with absolute certainty. Sorry, but if you’re using someone elses server for your communications and they’re not end to end encrypted, you should just assume that they can and do read your emails, and act accordingly.
Mine is E2EE.
Do you so it over PGP? Or is it done with ZAE like with Proton?
Unless everyone you communicate with have agreed to use the same standard as you, no, it is not.
What is it that you’re concerned about? Assume that I have no idea what either the new or old Mozilla privacy policy is, please. I tend to assume that all such are a pack of lies and everything is spying on me.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-firefox-i-loved-is-gone-how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-it-now/
That article says it better than I can in s short post. Firefox’s terms of use/privacy policy went over like a lead balloon last month.
Thanks for the link.
I was thinking ab this being april fool bcz it’s posted on 1st…
Google announced Gmail on April 1
Thunderbird Pro will apparently be:
This email thing plus Thunderbird Send (which is basically https://send.vis.ee/), Thunderbird Appointment - a scheduling tool and Thunderbird Assist, which is:
“…at least for now, being cautiously labeled as “an experiment” that will allow users to take advantage of AI features within their email. However, the goal is to be lightweight enough that the language models can be run locally on a user’s PC in the interest of privacy. This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia’s confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user’s PC isn’t powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy.”
So AI shit that nobody asked for or wants.
This covers my thoughts about damn near every “helpful” feature this side of auto-complete email addresses.
"[…] This service is being developed in partnership with Flower AI, which leverages Nvidia’s confidential compute to provide private remote processing in the event a user’s PC isn’t powerful enough. Sipes emphasizes that any remote processing features attached to Thunderbird Assist will always be optional, in the interest of ensuring complete user privacy.”
That’s a lot of words to say “we made an AI that totally won’t suck up your data, trust me bro”
“nvidia’s confidential compute” had me choke when reading it. Sure bro, sure.
This sounds like proton except I haven’t heard a thing about cost or encryption which leads me to believe you will pay with your data and there will be no encryption.
Proton is the bare minimum for email services. Email should be fully redone at its core.
I hope to god one day the developers at Mozilla finally get tired of this shit and fork everything under a new org.
Fuck off with more services and give me my integrated FTP client back. No one who uses Mozilla software wants more cloud shit or online services from Mozilla.
lol @ ftp client
integrated FTP client
Why though? SFTP is leagues better.
For transfers between systems you own yes, but when grabbing a Linux iso from a public server FTP works fine.
For years Firefox allowed you to crawl FTP sites natively.
True.
Here’s what I want… I leave a computer on at home and it checks my email. I get emails from it at my phone. No setup. Make it work like Sinkthing used to work. I don’t want cloud anything. Fucking backup nightmare where my shit ends up kidnapped by a company for monthly ransom.
if it’s anything like gmail, they’d offer imap so you can set it up in thunderbird and download your messages locally.
Syncthing still works like that. It’s completely self hostable. I have it on a pi 1B+ lol
I have it but it eats up battery on the phones and the Dev left so it’s probably going to go caput at some point.
You really need to clarify your comment, as it’s already causing confusion.
- The official Syncthing project is going strong, and is not the same thing as the Android app.
- The Android app was discontinued late last year due to Google’s increasingly difficult requirements to publish on the Play Store.
- Syncthing-Fork is now what Syncthing recommends for Android users.
Check out the fork on fdroid
I know there’s a fork. I’m hoping it picks up devs from where its at. It works beautifully.
That fork is what the Syncthing devs recommend. Pretty sure it’s fine.
Oh good to see!
Aw man, I really love syncthing, especially across my computers/backup server at home. I don’t even know what I’d use instead
Syncthing isn’t going anywhere. The Android app is the only thing that was dropped, and that was only because of Google’s increasingly-difficult requirements to publish on the Play Store.
Syncthing-Fork is the spiritual successor to the original Android app and can be found on F-Droid.
Syncthing was only ever self-hosted…
Sooo… where will be your email server then? On your home computer?
At home but separate computer with reverse proxy.
Oh You will have trouble getting your outbound mail delivered
It works I already tried. But I stopped short of jumping on board because its not the safest. No, what we need is some fedi style development. We need email on fedi.
I have a 20ish year old history in my Gmail account organized in labels and all that. I wonder if it will be viable to migrate?
Considering labels are very non-standard, which caused trouble over IMAP since forever, I wouldn’t count on that part.
Labels are displayed as folders on IMAP, which means that a single message could appear in multiple folders. Are there any other problems you’re talking about?
One of the problems that annoyed me in the past is the complexity and ambiguity of deleting an email over IMAP. Depending on whether it’s the last label of the deleted email, deleting an email from a label’s directory either removes a label from this email, or actually deletes the email.
Please archive shit. It’s OK to save old data, but not on the service. There are ways. Even banks, the most obsessive and legally strapped data hoarders keep their 5+ year old data in deep cold storage, away from the active services. 99.9^% of information that old won’t be looked at by anyone.
Not true.
It’s much easier to keep old data in active storage where it can be classified, searched, and have retention/deletion policies applied. Moving it elsewhere makes it more likely you’ll just hang onto it forever while not using it at all.
When was the last time you had to find a 20 year old email? Share your anecdotes.
Edit: I’m not being snarky, there are legitimate and more functional solutions.
I don’t disagree that you should set up retention policies to delete old email, I disagree that you should remove old emails from primary service/storage.
I actually did need a 15 year old email a few months ago. I don’t recall what I needed, but I then set up a retention policy to delete old stuff.
Warranty… Some are 15-20 years, but you need proof of purchase docs, which are often emailed data.
Why not having an archive of exclusively warranties? Emails can be downloaded, indexed and compressed. I agree on keeping archives of old stuff. But emails used as cloud drives are a huge problem for IT and security reasons. A legal folder is better and facilitates backup, encryption and much more accessibility.
So you don’t really want to archive in the technical sense, you want it offline for security, which is valid but extremely inconvenient for regular end users.
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welp I signed up for the waitlist.
I’ll use it for a disposable email at first, and if it endures and does well I’ll move my main shit off to it.
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Based on what I’ve seen in their forums it will be a paid service. I think it will be free at first for beta testers but I assume they are targeting people who currently use services like Proton.
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nah. ad free paid emails are already a thing
If its not zero access its just more ameritech bullshit.
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Doesn’t like 90% of Mozilla’s funding come from Google? At least expanding their paid services could be seen as trying to turn that around.
The anti-monopoly lawsuit against Google fixed that
Now Mozilla has to find a way to offset that loss, which would be attracting the non-Firefox market
Nice! Good for them.
From my understanding thunbird is somewhat separated from this. From the article linked by OP it says:
What’s crystal clear is that Thunderbird’s ever-increasing donation revenue (currently its sole source of income) is allowing for some explosive growth that’s long overdue. To add some context to this, Thunderbird received $2.8 million in donation revenue during 2021. Two years later, in 2023, it received $8.6 million in donations. I’m told that total financial contributions for 2024 were even higher, though the final amount hasn’t been officially released.
I’d consider it. If they host things outside of the US/start moving operations overseas, it’d be a lot more interesting. I sub to Proton for email, VPN, and drive support. Still hoping someday for proper Linux drive support so Mozilla/Thunderbird can target that
Archive link for anyone else for whom that article crashed their tab.
