[HN Gopher] Bringing Exchange Support to Thunderbird
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Bringing Exchange Support to Thunderbird
Author : campuscodi
Score : 100 points
Date : 2024-04-20 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.thunderbird.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.thunderbird.net)
| superkuh wrote:
| >in the entire 20 year lifetime of the Thunderbird project, no
| one has added support for a new mail protocol before.
|
| Technically true but also every megacorp's OAuth2 out-of-band
| authentication implementation needs it's own special
| configuration (read workaround) per email client and Thunderbird
| has collected quite a few. These are not normal mail protocols:
| they're over HTTPS not IMAP or POP3 or SMTP.
|
| This proclamation "no one has added support for a new mail
| protocol" is a good thing and this change is not good. Supporting
| proprietary setups is pragmatic and understandable but it's not
| good. This is only going to briefly mitigate the problems of
| email splintering into dozens of per-corporation variations while
| encouraging people to be okay with them in the long run.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Employees have no choice when it comes to their corporate email
| provider, and this is not a hill to die on for 99.99999% of
| them.
|
| On the other hand, being able to use Thunderbird as a client is
| a net win and a pragmatic move.
| Ringz wrote:
| The sad fact is: Most employees aren't able or allowed to
| install an alternative email client. And most employees don't
| care.
| kbenson wrote:
| Although, I would assume of those that can run what they
| want and do care they are already aware of and possibly use
| Thunderbird.
|
| Not every initiative has to _just_ be about new users.
| Sometimes it 's important to retain the ones you have.
| Making Thunderbird more useful and viable for those that
| use it already isn't a bad thing.
| memco wrote:
| Years ago I worked for a place used exhange and third party
| tools were heavily discouraged but not banned. Web access
| wasn't supported either so we were almost forced to have to
| use Outlook on a Windows machine. But I found DAVmail[0]
| allowed me to use the apps I wanted without being locked in
| and without mail clients supporting it directly. Nice to
| see more options here. Hopefully those of us who do care
| can continue to make the choices to use the tools we like.
|
| [0] https://davmail.sourceforge.net/
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > every megacorp's
|
| It's not just one of every megacorp, it's by far the most
| commonly used email in business, Microsoft's Exchange and
| especially Exchange online.
| Ringz wrote:
| This is good news and I'm looking forward to Thunderbird natively
| supporting XChange. But everything I read about it triggers my
| inner voice: ,,Do a parallel rewrite of the whole damn 20 year
| old codebase in Rust! It's faster, cheaper and cleaner. Do it
| right now. Don't discuss it in mailing lists. Take 12 competent
| software developers and let them rebuild everything."
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Faster and cheaper to write an email client from scratch?
| Including HTML rendering? Are you sure?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| When all you have is Rust, everything looks like magic.
| Ringz wrote:
| Really? Good to know! Because I don't know anything about
| Rust yet. Only C++ and Python. But I think that if you know
| a programming language sufficiently, everything looks like
| magic, or is that not the case with you?
| Ringz wrote:
| No. Leave the html rendering to Firefox.
|
| Edit: As it has already been handled by Thunderbird in the
| past.
| lousken wrote:
| why implementing ews when it is already deprecated and will be
| removed in two years?
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/re...
| shamiln wrote:
| Not everyone is using Exchange Online.
| lousken wrote:
| only like vast majority, yes, i know
| babolivier wrote:
| As Sean Burke puts it on the related bug on Bugzilla
| (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1847846#c2):
|
| > At present, EWS is our best way to enable support for both
| Exchange Online and on-premise installations.
|
| > Graph API has been considered and may be considered again in
| future, but it currently provides narrower support than EWS and
| lacks some functionality for desktop applications. Even with
| the announcement that EWS support will be removed for Exchange
| Online, it's still valuable in the short term for enabling
| access for a wide userbase and in the long term for supporting
| users using on-premise installations.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >on-premise installations
|
| But really tho...
|
| The venn of "my work uses exchange on-prem", "I use Linux
| desktop and can't use outlook", "I am aware of and would use
| exchange on Thunderbird" is pretty damn small.
|
| I think they're making a mistake using EWS and planning on
| targeting on-prem with the same or more weight than online.
| kbenson wrote:
| And yet it's exactly the situation I'm in. I use evolution
| on Ubuntu through a horizon virtual desktop, purely for
| better exchange support. I switched from thunderbird on
| windows to outlook on windows when I started having a lot
| more meetings to coordinate, and then evolution when a
| virtual desktop solution was rolled out and Linux was an
| option for desktops at work again. Quite a few other people
| in my department that just use thunderbird on Linux because
| they can't stand outlook or using the web version would
| happily have better outlook support.
|
| Perhaps there is an audience here and it just doesn't match
| your own experiences.
| groestl wrote:
| "my work uses exchange on-prem" is pretty large though,
| especially in headcount (enterprises).
| mairusu wrote:
| Because you basically have no other realistic choice for the
| time being when dealing with crap such as Exchange.
| packetlost wrote:
| We're desperately in need of SMTP/2 + IMAP5 or something
| f_devd wrote:
| JMAP exists
| Aloisius wrote:
| Part of JMAP exists.
|
| JMAP calendar, contacts, sharing and sieve scripts aren't
| finalized yet.
| hnarn wrote:
| Strategically this makes sense if the goal is just to get people
| to use Thunderbird, but ideologically JMAP support would be a lot
| nicer in my opinion.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| This post gives me extremely little hope.
|
| One one hand... ok, let's say it's an engineering post written by
| devs for devs. OKAY, talk about Rust if you like. Devs might be
| more interested in the cause than the effect.
|
| On the other hand... is this written for devs? Seems written for
| users. And I for one don't give one half of one shit what
| language you use _as a customer_. It's a post about Exchange, I
| don't want to hear about new fangled language. I don't pay you
| use a specific language, I pay you to deliver a specific
| feature... now obviously I don't pay them in anything but time,
| donation, and reputation. But I think the point applies.
|
| No one but Rust Evangelicals care about doing something over in
| Rust. There isn't a single end feature that you can deliver in
| Rust but not C.
|
| It reads to me like the developers are nerding out on a detail
| while being slightly uncommitted to the thing they "are paid to
| make".
|
| I have to agree with the other users that MS has already set an
| EOL on the feature that TB is planning to use. So... woohoo Rust?
| diarrhea wrote:
| > There isn't a single end feature that you can deliver in Rust
| but not C.
|
| There are! Namely, when it's open source with volunteer-ish
| developers, who cannot be arsed to not use Rust, as it's simply
| that much more pleasant to be spending your time with.
|
| So in some sense, it's either done in Rust because the
| implementers want to for one reason or another, or just not at
| all, as no one can be forced.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Not sure why the headline was changed. This is an article about
| Rust programming. "Bringing Exchange Support to Thunderbird"
| implies it's about Thunderbird and it's support for Exchange -
| something you won't learn from the article.
| Zhyl wrote:
| What are you talking about, fam? Exchange support for
| Thunderbird is the entire second half of the article.
| pquki4 wrote:
| Based on the first paragraph of the article which focuses on
| Exchange rather than language, I'd say the feature itself is
| more important than the implementation, and that's also what
| most users care about.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Hate Exchange but glad they are doing this. Now maybe I can
| successfully send plaintext mail on Exchange when confined to
| Windows.
| counterpartyrsk wrote:
| > it's no surprise that there's demand among Thunderbird users to
| support Exchange.
|
| Uh, I'm surprised. How many people actually love thunderbird? And
| to the extend it justified the development.
| DrewRWx wrote:
| Do you have a use case you'd prefer they put their resources
| into implementing?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that no development is justified? I think we
| can expect that for any email client, there will be demand for
| one of the most popular email servers, and one that is required
| for most corporate use.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > How many people actually love thunderbird?
|
| I love Thunderbird and give them money every month. Name
| another good open source mail client.
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| Enough to raise ~2.8m in donations annually:
| https://blog.thunderbird.net/2022/05/thunderbird-2021-financ...
| Semaphor wrote:
| I recently tried Thunderbird instead of Outlook. It had the same
| issue as FF did before the quantum update: It's too damn slow.
| Switching between different folders with hundreds or thousands of
| mails has noticable delays, while in Outlook it's essentially
| instant.
| eholk wrote:
| If you're using Windows, in my experience Thunderbird is
| essentially unusable until you add a Windows Defender exclusion
| for your Thunderbird profile.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > There was also no paid maintainership from about 2012 -- when
| Mozilla divested and transferred ownership of Thunderbird to its
| community -- until 2017, when Thunderbird rejoined the Mozilla
| Foundation.
|
| What a scandal this was. A prime example of Mozilla's backwards
| priorities.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Is thunderbird search on par with gmail's search?
| diarrhea wrote:
| It is the worst search I have ever used in any product.
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