fidzu : firefox

For the past few months, we've been talking about our roadmaps and development and answering community questions in a video and podcast series we call "State of the Thunder." We've decided, after your feedback, to also cover them in a blog, for those who don't have time to watch or listen to the entire session.

This session is focused on answering inquiries from the community, and we've got the questions and summaries of the answers (with helpful links to resources we mentioned)! This series runs every two weeks, and we'll be creating blogs from here on in. If you have any questions you'd like answered, please feel free to include them in the comments!

Supporting and Sustaining FOSS Projects We Use

Question: As we move toward having more traditionally commercial offerings with services that are built on top of other projects, what is our plan in helping those projects' maintenance (and financial) sustainability? If we find a good model, can we imagine extending it to our apps, too?

Answer: Right now, the only project we're using to help build Thunderbird Pro is Stalwart, and we'll have more details on how we're using it soon. But we absolutely want to make sure the project gets financial support from us to support its sustainability and well-being. We want to play nice!

Appointment and Assist are from scratch, and Send is from old Firefox code, and so there isn't another project to support with those. But to go back to a point Ryan Sipes has frequently made, while people can use all of these tools for free by self-hosting, they can subscribe as a way of both simplifying their usage and making sure these projects are supported for regular maintenance and a long life.

Future UI Settings Plans

Question: The interface is difficult to customize but more importantly is difficult to discover all the options available because they're scattered around settings, account settings, top menu bar, context menus, etc. 140 Introduced the Appearance section in the settings, any plans to continue this effort with some more drastic restructuring of the UI?

Answer: Yes, we do have plans! We know the existing UI isn't the most welcoming, since it is so powerful and we don't want to overwhelm users with every option they can configure. We have a roadmap that's almost ready to share that involves restructuring Account Settings. Right now, individual settings are very scattered, and we want to group things together into related sections that can all be changed at the same time. We want to simplify discoverability to make it easier to customize Thunderbird without digging into the config panel.

Account Setup and Manual Configuration

Question: Using manual configuration during email setup has become more difficult with time with the prioritization of email autoconfiguration.

Answer: Unfortunately, manual setup has confused a lot of casual users, which is why we've prioritized autodiscovery and autosetup. We've done a lot of exploration and testing with our Design team, and in turn they've done a lot of discussion and testing with our community. You can see some of these conversations in our UX mailing list. And even if you have to start the process, there is a link in it to edit the configuration manually. Ultimately, we have to have a balance between less technical and more technical users, and to be as usable and approachable as we can to the former.

Balancing Complexity and Simplicity

Question: Thunderbird is powerful with a lot of options but it should have more. Any plans to integrate ImportExportTools (and other add-ons) and add more functionalities?

Answer: Thunderbird's Add-ons are often meant for users who like more complexity! When we tackle this question, there's two issues that come to mind. First, several developers get financial support from their users, and we want to be mindful of that. Second is the eternal question of how many features are too many features? We already have this issue in feedback between "Thunderbird doesn't have enough features" and "Thunderbird is too complicated!" Every feature we add gives us more technical debt. If we bring an add-on into core, we can support it for the long term.

We think this question may also come from the fact that Add-ons often "break" with each ESR release. But we're trying to find ways to support developers to use the API to increase compatibility. We're also considering how we can financially support Add-on developers to help them maintain their apps. Our core developers are pressed for time, and so we're beyond grateful to the Add-on developers who can make Thunderbird stronger and more specialized than we could on our own!

Benefits of the New Monthly Release Channel

Question: Is the new Release channel with monthly versions working properly and bringing any benefits?

Answer: Yes, on both counts! Right now, we have 10 to 20 percent of Thunderbird desktop users on the Release channel. While we don't have hard numbers for the benefits YET, we'd love to get some numbers on improvements in bug reactivity and other indicators. We noticed this year's ESR had far fewer bugs, which probably owed to Release users testing new features. While we've always had Beta users, we have so many more people on Release. So if something went wrong, we could fix it, let it "ride the train," and have the fix in the next version.

And our developers have stopped wondering when our features will make it to users! Things will be in users' hands in a month, versus nearly a year for some features.

JMAP Support in Thunderbird

Question: Any plans on supporting JMAP?

Answer: 100% yes. Though JMAP is still something of a niche protocol, with doesn't yet have widespread support from major providers. But now, with Thundermail we'll be our own provider, and it will come with JMAP. Also, with the upcoming iOS app, it will be easy to add support for JMAP. First, we're making the app from scratch so we have no technical debt. Second, we can do things properly from the start and be protocol agnostic.

Also, we've taken several lessons from our Exchange implementation, namely how to implement a new protocol properly. This will help us add support for JMAP faster.

Maintaining Backups in Thunderbird

Question: I have used Thunderbird since its first release and I always wondered how to properly and safely maintain backups of local emails. No matter how much I hate Outlook it offers built-in backup archives of .pst files that can be moved to other installations. The closest thing in Thunderbird is to copy the entire profile folder, but that comes with many more unpredictable outcomes.

I might be asking for something uncommon but I manage many projects with a very heavy communication flow between multiple clients, and when the project is completed I like to export the project folder with all the messages into a single PST file and create a couple of back-ups for safety, so no matter if my email server has problems, or the emails on my server and computer are accidentally deleted, I have that folder back-up as a single file which I can import into a new installation.

Answer: We'd love for anyone with this question to come talk to us about how to improve our Import/Export tools. Unfortunately, there's no universal email archive format, and a major issue is that Outlook's backup files are in a proprietary format. We've rebuilt the Import/Export UI and done a bit on the backend. Alas, this is all we've had time for.

So, if you'd like to help us tackle this problem, come chat with us! You can find us on Matrix and in the Developers and Planning mailing lists. We think there's definitely room for a standard around email backups.

Watch the Video (also available on TILvids)

Listen to the Podcast

The post State of the Thunder: Answering Community Questions! appeared first on The Thunderbird Blog.

30 Jul 2025 3:50pm GMT

The choices governments make today, about who gets to build, access and benefit from AI, will shape economic competitiveness, national security and digital rights for decades.

A new report by UK think tank, Demos, supported by Mozilla, makes the case that if the UK wants to thrive in the AI era it must embrace openness. And while the report is tailored to the UK context, its implications reach far beyond Westminster.

Unlike the US or China, the UK and many other countries cannot outspend or outscale on AI, but they can out-collaborate. Demos' report The Open Dividend: Building an AI openness strategy to unlock the UK's AI potential, argues that making key AI resources - models, datasets, compute and safety tools, more openly accessible can spur innovation, lower the costs of AI adoption, enable safer and more transparent development, boost digital sovereignty and align AI more closely with public value. A recipe, if there ever was one, for 'winning' at AI.

The wider market certainly reflects these trends - the AI sector is shifting toward value accruing in smaller, specialised and more efficient models. Developments all spurred on by open source innovation. But this also means open models aren't just more accessible and customisable, they're becoming more capable too.

This echoes another recent study Mozilla supported, this time a survey of more than 700 businesses conducted by McKinsey. Among its top findings - 50% of respondents are already leveraging an open source solution across their stack. More than three-quarters reported that they intended to grow this usage. Most significantly, the first movers - organisations that see AI as vital to their future competitive advantage - are more than 40% more likely to use open source models and tools than respondents from other organisations. Similar research just published by the Linux Foundation has also found openness is fast becoming a competitive edge. Demos's report expands upon these stats - strategically utilising openness in AI is not just about sharing code, it's about shaping a more resilient and prosperous ecosystem.

The risks of centralisation are well known and global. We have seen it before with the development of the internet. If we let AI ecosystems become concentrated, so that all power remains in the hands of a few firms and their proprietary models, this will make it much harder to ensure AI serves people - rather than the other way around. It also raises more urgent concerns about market dominance, bias, surveillance, and national resilience.

If we want AI to serve humanity, we all have a stake in getting this right.

As the Demos report argues, openness isn't just a value - it's a strategy. We were proud to support the development of this timely report - read it here.

The post Open by Design: How Nations Can Compete in the Age of AI appeared first on Open Policy & Advocacy.

30 Jul 2025 2:44pm GMT

New announcment out from YouTube: Extending Protections to More US-Based Teens.

Protections, that sounds good. What are teenaged YouTube users getting protected from? The list of protections is:

• Showing only non-personalized ads

• Enabling digital wellbeing tools by default. This includes take a break and bedtime reminders.

• Showing reminders about privacy when uploading a video or commenting publicly

• Minimizing recommendations of videos with content that could be problematic if viewed in repetition

Cool, cool, all makes sense, I can see they're trying to get teens to develop healthy online habits, and…hold on a minute, go back to that first one. Showing only non-personalized ads is a protection now?

Google isn't going to come out and say that personalized ads are bad for you, but, using a little logic here, if they say that not showing you personalized ads is protecting you, it's the same thing. Yes, this is similar to the old smoking is an adult custom messages, back when the tobacco companies somehow had to come out in favor of limiting underage sales of cigarettes without admitting that smoking is harmful in general. If you don't smoke, don't start. And whatever age you're at now, there are still health benefits to quitting.

The good news is that you don't have to be under 18 to be a non-smoker, I mean opted out of risky ad personalization. The Google version of the non-smoking section is a few clicks away-click this to buy better stuff and be happier-and some effective privacy tips will get you some protection on other companies' sites and apps too. Some of the pro-Google academics are still claiming benefits for personalized ads, but I wonder how long that's going to be able to hold up. More: advertising personalization: good for you?

Bonus links

'AI veganism': Some people's issues with AI parallel vegans' concerns about diet by David Joyner (See also Straight edge which, to me, looks more similar so far.)

That Pew Report Is Sure Looking Like a Foundational Text, Unfortunately by Nick Heer. The overall trend seems undeniable, however - A.I. Overviews are generally clobbering search referral traffic. Publishers are aware of ebbs and flows in search referral traffic. A.I. Overviews are not having that kind of middling effect.

Meta To Suspend All Political Ads In EU by Colin Kirkland. (Correction: Meta to suspend all political ads from rule-following moderates and liberals. In practice, the extreme right will keep evading the rules, Meta will keep under-staffing the ad review teams so they keep getting away with it, and the left will keep being bad at social media advertising on principle.)

Taylor Owen: Canadians now see the US as the most serious disinfo threat by Ethan Zuckerman. Owen warns that Silicon Valley companies have changed their status. It's not just performative alignment with Trump: major platforms are ending the ten year era of trust and safety, turning moderation over to crowdsourcing. These platforms are moving from minimal transparency to complete opacity. These US government as well as US platforms are participating in the persecution of disinformation researchers. And we're no longer worried about ideological segregation within platforms so much as we are worried about platforms becoming tightly aligned with political points of view.

How the Kyiv Independent reached 20,000 paying members - with no paywall by Sarah Scire. The Kyiv Independent connects readers to each other through monthly events, its Discord, community maps, Ukrainian lessons with a language tutor, and localized campaigns. More than a third of its members pinned their location on the outlet's community map and about 10% of its most-engaged members are active on the Discord…

We Need To Talk About Sloppers by Rusty Foster. The essential problem is this: generative language software is very good at producing long and contextually informed strings of language, and humanity has never before experienced coherent language without any cognition driving it.

Money by Vile Means by Peter Ryan. [T]he speculative frenzy around cryptocurrencies has only continued to gather steam, to the benefit of private actors who have reaped massive profits from the industry's growth and are exercising a growing influence over the state. In the process, Bitcoin's founding goal of fighting unconstrained government spending has been inverted, as crypto is increasingly serving as a means of enabling more deficit spending, an agenda the Trump administration has all but explicitly embraced. Today, crypto is merely the latest ruse to persuade the public to surrender democratic freedom and financial sovereignty to oligarchs.

30 Jul 2025 12:00am GMT