[HN Gopher] Goodbye K-9 Mail
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Goodbye K-9 Mail
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 203 points
Date : 2025-02-27 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cketti.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (cketti.de)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Oh no! K-9 Mail is awesome, what a great job you've done. Thanks
| so much.
|
| Good luck with your next steps.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "The months leading up to the release were quite stressful for
| me. All of us were working on many things at the same time to not
| let the targeted release date slip too much. We never worked
| overtime, though. And we got additional paid time off after the
| release "
|
| I'm kind of curious what the source of the stress was. It clearly
| wasn't being overworked.
| nisegami wrote:
| Sounds like there was a lot of context switching involved? I
| can see how that would be stressful.
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| Judging by their passion for the project, I imagine just the
| idea of releasing it was stressful.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Not working overtime (beyond, say, 8 hours a day), doesn't mean
| you're not getting swamped during the time (8 hours) that you
| _are_ working.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Perhaps you only develop easy stuff. There were plenty of days
| when I was wrung out long before I had worked the regulation
| 7.5 hours.
| pavon wrote:
| I don't know the nature of their deadline, but when I've been
| working to meet a deadline that couldn't be moved for
| legitimate reasons, not being approved to work overtime made
| the stress worse not better. Something I made and cared about
| was going to ship broken because I couldn't fix the problems
| quickly enough. Weekends were spent trying not to think about
| everything I could be doing on the project right now.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I did't know what MZLA was exactly, Wikipedia says:
|
| "The Mozilla Foundation supports and leads the Mozilla project,
| which develops Firefox, Thunderbird and [...] has two taxable
| subsidiaries: Mozilla Corporation and MZLA Technologies
| Corporation."
| gostsamo wrote:
| Mzla is the entity that houses the tb project. TB and ff are
| administratively separated and the two corps are the physical
| manifestation of this fact.
| walterbell wrote:
| Hopefully this separation means Thunderbird will not require
| user email content to be licensed for AI, as Firefox now
| requires.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| [citation needed]
| lxgr wrote:
| Do you have any details on this? Sounds pretty concerning
| if true.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Probably a reference to the changes described in the post
| linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43194536.
| It's not clear to me that that's what it says, but it's
| also not clear to me that that's not what it allows.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| How does this work with regard to the GDPR.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| That was an interesting history of the K-9 app. Personally I've
| always been a user of The Other FOSS Email App (FairEmail), but I
| keep a close eye on how Thunderbird for Android is developing and
| it's great to have (at least) two solid FOSS choices in this
| space. Kudos to this dev and hopefully the great work he has done
| is continued by the team there.
| 42lux wrote:
| I loved the app and hated the icon with a passion. All the best.
| :)
| jinnko wrote:
| It's a reference to Dr Who.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_(Doctor_Who)
| Nux wrote:
| Heavy user of k9. Thanks for your work!
| cycomanic wrote:
| I don't want to disparage the great work that has gone into k9,
| but it's really unfortunately that the jmap support never went
| beyond the proof of concept state. I'd really love some
| mainstream client support for jmap.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I got a chill of dread when reading the headline and the
| beginning of this, but it was nice to see that in the end the
| reason he chose to leave the project was precisely because he
| felt like it now had a stable future and it wasn't all relying on
| him. I've used K-9 Mail for many years and hope it remains usable
| for many more. Thanks for all your work. :-)
| metalman wrote:
| I stoped reading and went and checked for updates, which there
| was one, the changed the UI ,so that the one little frustration
| I had, is fixed:), and whew! eh, no need to change plans on
| email. Then finnished reading the post.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| That could still happen.
|
| I would watch their development closely considering to me,
| they'll likely leave K-9 Mail in the dust once Thunderbird on
| Android gets completely stable. It would be a sad end to one
| of the only true open source email apps left and with him
| gone, they can initiate it if they want to.
| neilv wrote:
| Why did there need to be a targeted release date for a re-branded
| open source project release, to the point that it stressed out
| the team?
|
| * Was there very small runway for a number of salaries that were
| now needed?
|
| * Were there enterprise sales contingent on a delivery date?
|
| * Did they purchase a Superbowl ad?
|
| * Were there suddenly managers, with OKRs and KPIs?
|
| (BTW, I'm a happy K-9 user, on and off, for 15 years. With breaks
| for iPhones and other experiments, before coming back, and
| currently using K-9 on GrapheneOS. Kudos to the author and other
| K-9 contributors for their work.)
| tristor wrote:
| I was not involved in this project, but I have previously
| worked at Mozilla (although I left over 3 years ago). Maybe I
| can share some high level insights for how these things are
| approached.
|
| Generally there are specific feature expectations when new
| platforms are added, and it can be a fairly major work. Besides
| rebranding, there are likely UI changes for look and feel, as
| well as specific capabilities expected across all platforms
| that were probably missing. Project deadlines tend to be soft
| deadlines rather than hard deadlines, but they are created to
| provide a point to work back from and define scope, and the
| goal is always to hit the deadline for release. Every day you
| don't release is a day users don't get access to the work
| you've put in.
|
| I seriously doubt Mozilla purchased a Superbowl ad or otherwise
| had financial reasons to set this deadline.
| neilv wrote:
| Thanks, the general theory makes a lot of sense.
| pixelHD wrote:
| My earliest contributions to opensource is probably k9mail. I was
| still early in my undergrad, and wanted to get my feet wet in the
| opensource space, and to prep for google summer of code. K9 mail
| was my choice since the community (cketti) was friendly, and
| accommodating.
|
| I started implementing the long-press events to handle
| image/attachment menu options. My PR wasn't upto snuff, but
| cketti was kind enough to clean it up and merge it. They even put
| my handle in the commit logs. Looking back, I probably wasted
| their time with my PR, but they were gracious enough to not
| complain, and gave me credit.
|
| I still fondly remember those days and nights building upto the
| pr, and then refreshing the commit log page to see my handle show
| up.
|
| I hope cketti finds happiness with whatever they do next.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Thank you kindly for the work with keeping K-9 light and
| efficient.
| johnea wrote:
| I wonder how this affects thunderbird?
|
| Mozilla's New Terms of Use:
|
| https://www.quippd.com/writing/2025/02/26/mozillas-new-terms...
|
| Both on the desktop, and in android.
|
| I've had pretty severe misgivings about the mozilla foundation
| for years now, in spite of my multi-decade love-hate relationship
| with thunderbird. (it still has over 10 year old bugzilla entries
| for basic IMAP folder shortcomings)
|
| Maybe when cketti gets over his downturn, and considers where to
| go next, the answer will be back to K-9 with a fork from pre
| mozilla.
|
| The org being almost completely funded by goggle really
| diminishes it's independence...
| vzaliva wrote:
| Is android K-9 Mail in any way relayed to Symbian K-9 Mail?
| ncphil wrote:
| Thanks cketti, for all your toil on K-9 and Thunderbird for
| Android. Over many years K-9 was the only mail client that just
| worked for me. When I finally transitioned to a certain secure
| web mail provider based in CH, I had to leave K-9 behind. But I
| still appreciate the challenge of making an open protocol mail
| client work reliably. Enjoy your sabbatical, however long it
| lasts, and keep an open mind about the future: the skills you've
| honed as a software developer are substantial and give you a head
| start in pretty much any field.
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