* Georg Koppen:
By making this switch:
- Users will get access to secure chat from Tor Messenger and secure email from TorBirdy, in a single application - Thunderbird has a single-window chat interface which is different from Instantbird (and better) - We can continue supporting Tor Messenger as a chat client for IRC/Jabber/Twitter - Users will get a Tor Mail application which has been requested for a whileThe idea behind this email is to brainstorm this switch and solicit feedback from the community, so please share your thoughts!
Could you elaborate on what you mean with
""" By doing this, we can continue maintaining Tor Messenger for our users and adding new features to it, and also prototype the "Tor Mail" bundle as has been requested in the past. """
and
""" By making this switch:
- We can continue supporting Tor Messenger as a chat client for IRC/Jabber/Twitter"""
Are you planning to maintain two applications now? That is Tor Messenger and some mail bundle? If not, should there be a transition? If so, how would that look like given that Mozilla is on its way to remove Instantbird code from the tree?[1]
What I meant by this was that we will ship Thunderbird with both email and chat support; email provided by TorBirdy, and chat provided by the code that is already there in Tor Messenger plus the code which the Instantbird team will merge and maintain. As per the Instantbird blog post, "Instead of working on Instantbird, we'll refocus our energy on improving the chat features in Thunderbird, so that it becomes friendly for users who loved Instantbird and will seek a replacement." So they are just doing away with the interface but the chat code will still be there.
So what this transition means is that we stop building on Instantbird and start building on Thunderbird instead (with chat and mail support), copy over whatever changes are required from the existing code and working on the new features where required.