I use fastmail for long time and this move is not good. Instead of investing into TB for example, they do Electron bloatapp... Will for sure never touch that thing
Why should Fastmail invest in Thunderbird, an open-source email client run by a completely unrelated organization? Of course they could, out of good will. But you can't demand that they do.
This is just their webapp wrapped in an off-the-shelf browser engine. Hardly any development resources needed. It could have been quickly put together to tick a checkbox for some big client, the revenue from whom could help them work on features that actually matter more. None of us needs to use it. But somebody must have needed it, so here it is.
> Why should Fastmail invest in Thunderbird, an open-source email client run by a completely unrelated organization?
One very good reason is that Fastmail created the JMAP protocol and while work on getting it into Thunderbird started several years ago, it hasn’t progressed. So JMAP is kinda stuck (obviously Microsoft is not going to put it in Outlook).
It could’ve been a win-win-win for JMAP, Fastmail and Thunderbird to accelerate the implementation and support for JMAP within Thunderbird. This would/could help in JMAP adoption by other mail providers too.
> Why should Fastmail invest in Thunderbird, an open-source email client run by a completely unrelated organization? Of course they could, out of good will.
It's likely cheaper to submit self-serving patches than to build and maintain your own email client.
