Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

From Urban Dictionary via Fake Steve:

Vistaster n. a giant cluster-fuck; a colossal mistake; a turning point, inflection point, or event that, in retrospect, turns out to have led to the doom and demise of a once-powerful company, person or organization.

DERIVATIVES:
vistastrous. adj.
visastrously. adv.
“Have you seen Speed Racer? It’s a total vistaster.”

I think it’s about time to start using this term, so that hopefully it goes mainstream and becomes a new word.

On a related note, Festivus still isn’t in Websters Dictionary. It’s not in Thunderbird’s spell check either. That’s another word I’m lobbying for.

Google announced the project lists for Summer Of Code 2008. Some of the more interesting projects from my perspective:

Adium

• Data Detectors for Adium

Dojo Foundation

• Native cryptography API for Google Gears
• Dojo-Charting improvements
• Dojo GFX Enhancement

FFmpeg

• AAC-LC Encoder
• MLP/TrueHD encoder
• Apple Lossless Encoder for FFmpeg

Gallery

• Facebook / Flickr Style Image Region Based Tagging

Inkscape

• SVG Fonts

Joomla!

• Multi-DB support, and Database abstraction layer implementation for Joomla!

The Mozilla Project

• Natural language parsing for automatic calendar event creation
• Powerful search engine for SUMO
• Support OpenID as an account login in Bugzilla
• Google Contacts Extension for Thunderbird

MySQL

• Streaming Enabled MySQL Driver for PHP
• MySQL query analyzing tool
• New in-memory storage engine
• Memcached for Query Cache

PHP

• Implement Unicode into PHP 6

Pidgin

• Master password support for pidgin

WebKit

• WebForms 2.0 Support
• Improving and Extending WebKit Inspector

WordPress

• WP-storage
• Integrated Caching Solution
• Improving the search system

Google released the API for contacts. How long before someone comes up with a Thunderbird plugin to sync up with it? Any takers?

I’d love to know why they decided the API route, rather than use LDAP. It can be secured using TLS, and require a bind DN and bind password. If they did it that way, most email clients would be compatible right out of the gate.

There’s also Google Calendar Sync, but only supports Outlook. Still no CalDAV.

I’m slightly disappointed, but at least with an API thinks are workable. Standards would still be best.

So Microsoft will open up with information on many protocols/formats, and provide a “covenant” not to sue open source developers. Note the exception. Microsoft reserves the right to sue companies who commercially distribute such implementations. They need to get a license. As Microsoft put it in their principles:

Open Source Compatibility. Microsoft will covenant not to sue open source developers for development and non-commercial distribution of implementations of these Open Protocols.

As far as everyones reaction to this, Arstechnica wins with the best quote:

“Instead of offering a patent license for its protocol information on the basis of licensing arrangements it knows are incompatible with the GPL—the world’s most widely used open source software license.”

It may settle some curiosity in regards to how close certain reverse engineered implementations are to the actual protocol, but beyond that I don’t think it will make any difference. I think this caveat would limit most projects ability to utilize the information. I don’t think any major project is willing to utilize code subject to that limitation.

For example I mentioned just the other day that Exchange compatibility would bring about the most corporate adoption to Mozilla Thunderbird. Well this could potentially help make that a reality, except Mozilla’s commercial arm would be subject to trouble come release time. Not to mention any downstream commercial distribution that includes it (including many Linux distributions) unless they include a version without this code.

It may however be possible for a company to sell a product and offer a GPL licensed open source “plugin” or “addon” that adds the functionality. So for example Thunderbird would ship as usual via Mozilla Messaging and various Linux distributions. If you wanted exchange compatibility you would need to go to mozilla.org and download the addon for it. Similar to the current process for the provider for Google Calendar. However this adds a nasty extra step for users. It’s far from ideal.

The other notable thing in my mind is this part of their principles:

Industry Standard Formats. Microsoft supports many data formats promulgated by standards bodies in its products today. We will apply Principle II with respect to any standards-based data formats in our high-volume products. We will incorporate customer advice from our Interoperability Executive Customer Council and our ongoing community and customer engagement efforts to give us guidance to prioritize which standards we support in any given product release.

We want OpenDocument.

So despite all the media attention, I don’t think open source gained much today. There’s potential (OpenDocument getting priority would be nice), but really no big win. I just don’t see projects giving up GPL, and I’m pretty sure this agreement would violate GPL.

As some may remember, Mozilla’s plan for Thunderbird was to form a new (then unnamed) company owned by the Foundation. Mozilla Messaging has now launched. I’m a fan of this approach as I think it allows for the most synergy between the projects, which are really more fraternal or conjoined twins than sister projects. It also allows for more dedicated resources and focus that Thunderbird wasn’t receiving before.

David Ascher has a great post on what’s to come. There are a few things I’d like to touch on though.

…Specifically, Thunderbird 3 will build on the great base that is Thunderbird 2 (and the work already performed in trunk by the current and past contributors), and add some key features, such as:

Presumably meaning it’s based on Mozilla 1.9, though I’m not 100% clear on this.

• Integrated calendaring (building on the great work done by the Mozilla Calendar team and their Lightning add-on to Thunderbird),

Awesome. This is something that was missing from long ago. Though I wonder how far it will go without the server side being as available, robust and tested. Exchange compatibility would bring about the most corporate adoption, though that could be difficult to engineer. Google Calendar is supported via an addon. It’s still lacking in a few places, though rapidly improving. I believe it also works with Zimbra (can anyone confirm?), which is a good start.

• better search facilities,

I’m curious what this entails. Search is always tricky. Google Desktop has proven a good solution for many who need better search with their email client.

• easier configuration,

Cool. Enough said. I’ve had thoughts on that for a while.

• and a set of other user interface improvements.

Hopefully this will result in some native skinning similar to what Firefox 3.0 is doing.

Address Book is also about 4 years overdue for an overhaul. Personally I think it should be replaced entirely and use a mozStorage backend. Perhaps even look at the possibility of some data sharing with services like Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn. Obviously being careful to avoid causing a Scoble by scraping data. For something like this data portability will be critical.

Personally I’d like to see some standard emerge where closed messaging services can essentially be interfaced like an IMAP account. So one could plug in their account info and interact with their account via any tool they choose. Obviously sending would be limited to within the provider’s walls. Contacts, data, etc. can be sync’d between both providing a seamless experience.

…Another strength is that we already have a complete web technology stack built into our mail client, and as a result, we can consider deep integration with both websites and web services which other solutions can only dream of.

Extensions are powerful. But this is really where the strength is. It’s a rather complete platform, and constantly expanding to keep up with the latest. It’s far from a hacked together parser that does a subset of HTML.

I suspect 3.0 will be somewhat of a quieter release. Change won’t come overnight. Those expecting a radical new approach to email by 3.0 will likely be disappointed. 4.0 is where things will become a more disruptive. I’d assume this will correspond with Mozilla2, which might work out to be an advantage.

As a final note, for any who don’t realize Scott MacGregor and David Bienvenu (no idea where his new blog will be) aren’t working for Mozilla Messaging but will still be involved with Thunderbird. They haven’t said too much on their plans yet.

That’s about all of my thoughts on the topic for now.

Thunderbird is dead, long live Thunderbird.
Email is dead, long live Email.

I’ve gotten quite a few emails over the past several months from people who want to know how to sync their iPhone (or iPod touch) with Thunderbird. Quite a few are disappointed to find mozPod doesn’t support these newer devices. It’s not quite my fault as I’ve yet to see any indication that it’s practical to implement.

I should note I do not own either device, but from what I’ve read, it doesn’t matter. Hopefully by 2nd or 3rd generation when I’m on the market Apple will have come to their senses.

The problem is that Apple hasn’t provided a good method for anyone to provide sync with the iPod. Even on older devices it wasn’t pretty, but it was workable. There is no real sync API outside of iSync, which is Mac only and not a public API. Instead what was done is mount the iPod file system and send it your data. While not awesome, this has been workable and provided many Thunderbird users with mobile data.

On the iPhone and iPod touch it’s not even possible to easily mount the filesystem. The best method I’ve heard of is hacking it so you can mount your phone using sshfs with something like FUSE. I know myself and some Linux and Mac users (horray for MacFUSE!) could manage, but I wouldn’t dare try to explain to someone how to do that. From what I’ve read the iPhone manages data using SQLite 3. Therefore it seems possible to use mozStorage to interface with it. Perhaps someone with more experience with mozStorage and db’s generated outside mozStorage would know better about any potential compatibility issues.

Calendar:
/var/root/Library/Calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb

Address BookL
/var/root/Library/AddressBook/AddressBook.sqlitedb
/var/root/Library/AddressBook/AddressBookImages.sqlitedb

Seems to me Apple could turn this into an API pretty easily by re-creating the old iPod style USB storage device mounting and give us access to these files.

In my mind the ideal implementation would be for Apple to just have a iTunes embed a mini web server locally accessible (obviously) and create a REST API to work with all data on the device. That would open up a whole new way of interacting with the device. Essentially you would interact with 127.0.0.1:[port#] and GET/POST your way through the interface. Perfect for Calendar, Address Book, Notes, or whatever else Apple comes up with.

To get a vCard for someone:

  GET /contact/vcard/?last_name=Jones HTTP/1.1
  Host: localhost
  User-Agent: mozPod/0.3

vcard can also be done as XML (ooh DOM parsing for iPhone!), so there’s lots of possibilities.

To add a contact:

  POST /contact/add/ HTTP/1.1
  Host: localhost
  User-Agent: mozPod/0.3
  Content-Length: 450
  Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

  fname=John&lname=Doe&address=1%20Large%20Road...

Though it would likely make sense to go with a more vcard like naming structure.

For calendar iCalendar or vCalendar would make most sense:

 GET /calendar/ical/?start=1-1-1970&end=1-19-2038 HTTP/1.1
  Host: localhost
  User-Agent: mozPod/0.3

You get the idea. Dead simple access. You could then use something likecurl to manipulate the iPhone’s address book via your existing application. It would be only accessible locally, so it’s as secure as your system. It would actually make things more secure since it would be one less reason for tinkering on the actual device, and it would open up a whole new market of iPod/iPhone software to go with all those accessories that have helped boost Apple’s market share. SyncML is cool, but SyncML is also a beast and reminds me of SOAP, WSDL etc.

Chandler is the attempt by OSAF to create a PIM. Several years later, it’s still not ready for prime time. Now Mitch Kapor is leaving, and his funding will follow.

He also sits on the board of directors for the Mozilla Foundation. Parent of the Mozilla Corporation and the yet-to-be-named mail corporation which will continue Thunderbird’s development.

I think this quote from the article is really something to pay attention to:

The best communal open-source projects are run like Mozilla (strong core development team with easy pluggability from the outside), Eclipse (cohesive corporate involvement to create a common core while competing at the edges–come to think of it, Linux is like this too), or Apache (strong technology brand that allows for a wide range of experimentation).

Some more interesting reflections on the news can be found on Why does everything suck. Chandler always sounded very interesting, but it never really found it’s way.

Things to keep in mind as Thunderbird develops wings of it’s own.

Congratulations to John Lilly on becoming CEO. That post is a good read on what’s to come. I’m glad to see Thunderbird still has priority (#2 on that list). Christopher Blizzard has more on the news.

There’s some FUD going around that Thunderbird is in crisis (is Slashdot going to morph into a tabloid?). This is a bit over the top. Yes it’s true Scott and David announced they are leaving and moving on to something else. It’s a slightly different setup than was used for Firefox, but it’s just as promising. I’ve got confidence to say things will continue. There will be a transition period (just like there was when the Mozilla Foundation was formed). Different doesn’t mean something is dead. Remember the Netscape layoffs and the Death of Mozilla? Didn’t really harm the project. I’d say it helped. I won’t say anything more on the topic for the moment.

ComputerWorld has a rather good showdown of email clients on Mac OS X. The best breakdown of features I’ve seen on the Mac side in some time.

That said, I think they were slightly unfair to Thunderbird. For example, Thunderbird does have calendar support via Lightning which wasn’t mentioned (though it does indicate webmail support via extension). I’ve been using it with Google Calendar and it’s been working very well for me. It also says that Thunderbird can’t read from the Mac OS X Address book, though it should be noted that’s now fixed for the next release. It does however in another part of the breakdown briefly discuss Apple’s upcoming Mail release.

Another interesting note is that there doesn’t seem to be any mention of Entourage still not being available as a Universal Binary, meaning it’s very slow on Intel based Mac’s as I’ve mentioned before. We won’t see it as a Universal Binary until 2008. As someone who uses it daily at work, I’m counting down the days. IMHO this problem alone makes Thunderbird a much better mail client (minus the lack of Exchange support).

Does anyone know if Mail supports exchange? The review seems to think so (see the chart), though I thought that was only over IMAP. Apple seems to agree with me (emphasis mine):

Mail works with the following account types: POP, IMAP, .Mac, and Exchange (only if configured as an IMAP server). You can’t log in directly to Hotmail, AOL, or any service that does not support POP or IMAP access, and retrieve email using Mail.

I wouldn’t really call that support.

Other than those things which I believe aren’t quite accurate, I actually liked the review. I though it was a decent breakdown on a level I haven’t seen before. It exposes features that few really look at (search for example), but really matter in terms of user experience.