Ideas for the integration of Thunderbird with LibreOffice

Introduction
LibreOffice currently does not have a personal information manager (PIM) module/client (eg. email/mail, address book/contacts, calendar/events and tasks). This page discusses several ideas and options for the further integration of Mozilla Thunderbird with LibreOffice. Thunderbird is a full-fledged Email/PIM-Software. Its cross-platform availability and feature set currently makes it one of the best options for email and calendar. A comparison of MS Outlook and Mozilla thunderbird is provided here. Potential alternatives are, , Nylas N1 and.

''Please note that neither the LibreOffice developer team nor the Document Foundation gives any official recommendation for a PIM software replacement for LibreOffice. This wiki page is a pure collection of ideas and resources for better integration of LibreOffice and Thunderbird. It does not necessarily mean that the features will be implemented in neither Thunderbird nor LibreOffice.''

General options for an email/PIM client in LibreOffice
A new discussion on an email/PIM client and LibreOffice has started in the comments of Charles-H. Schulz blog: Surprises claws and various articles.

There are several options for LibreOffice (loose collection of options):


 * 1) Focus on core office features and do not offer email/PIM software.
 * 2) Focus on core office features and loosely recommend an email/PIM software (e.g. Thunderbird) [This is kind of what happens today, when some user asks for an email/PIM solution for LibreOffice].
 * 3) Focus on core office features and strongly recommend an email/PIM software (e.g. Thunderbird, Nylas N1) and care about better user experience via some extensions/adaptations for LibreOffice or Thunderbird, respectively.
 * 4) Same like (3), but improving an alternative (e.g. Kontact, Evolution) to be an actual cross-platform solution.
 * 5) Same like (3), but improving an alternative cross-platform mail client (e.g. Nylas N1) to have PIM functionality (e.g. contacts, calendar, tasks, etc.)
 * 6) Develop own email/PIM module in LibreOffice.
 * 7) Transferring Thunderbird to The Document Foundation.
 * 8) “LibreOffice PIM” developed by The Document Foundation. Forked from Thunderbird. In collaboration with Thunderbird's current programmers. Perhaps similar to how OpenOffice was forked into LibreOffice.
 * 9) “LibreOffice PIM Project” from Thunderbird similar to The Document Liberation Project under the umbrella of The Document Foundation.

Potential cooperation between LibreOffice and Thunderbird
In comment 13 of aforementioned blog entry, R Kent James, the chair of the Thunderbird council expressed his openness to cooperate with TDF and LibreOffice. He perceives the The Document Foundation as a model of how Thunderbird could be operating in the future as he wrote at Surprises, claws and various articles on August 5, 2015 at 12:05 am:

“One of my personal goals is to get Thunderbird to join more broadly in the open source world and movement, rather than being isolated as a little brother of Firefox in a Mozilla cocoon. I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time studying how TDF operates, as LibreOffice is in many ways a model for how we should be functioning in the future. We would be very open to cooperating with LibreOffice.”

In Thunderbird Planning on Google Groups, on 16 September 2015, the topic entitled “The Case for Thunderbird in Mozilla” by R Kent James had an excerpt of the letter he wrote to, Executive director, Mozilla Foundation beginning a major push to reach some sort of decision about the relationship of Thunderbird to Mozilla:

“Thunderbird needs to be given the opportunity to make a case to the Mozilla leadership of why we believe Thunderbird should continue to be an official product under the Mozilla brand. Let's get a decision. If Mozilla wants us, there a few things we need - such as a financial home for donations, and links on key websites. The Thunderbird community does not want to leave Mozilla, but in case Mozilla does not want us, we have had serious discussions with both Software Freedom Conservancy and The Document Foundation (home of LibreOffice) about possibly aligning ourselves with them. We are also large enough to exist successfully as a separately registered organization.”

In Thunderbird Planning on Google Groups, on 19 September 2015 in the topic entitled Future Planning: Thunderbird R Kent James wrote:

Also, in my discussion with an experienced outsider ( of ), he had this to say after observing our situation, which is quite accurate:

" your fundamental problem is an engineering / community decision that doesn't match your resources whereby you run up this steep travellator trying to keep up with changes which ( in theory ) can provide a long-term benefit to make it easier to develop, but in doing so you sacrifice actually doing the development on T-bird, so that future ~never comes =) Breaking that seems to me to be your top priority."

I fully agree with that, but I only see two choices: fork and freeze the Mozilla platform that we use, or migrate away from it. I am proposing the latter.

Excerpts from Mozilla's public governance forum under the topic entitled Thunderbird, the future, mozilla-central and comm-central:

In Thunderbird Planning on Google Groups, on 18 December 2015 in the topic entitled Thunderbird: Paths Forward an excerpt from (Software Engineer, Mozilla Foundation):

2) Fiscal Homes: Hiring a Consultant

One question facing Thunderbird is that of where the best fiscal/legal home for the project is. There are several of these on the table (MoFo, TDF, SFC, Apache, ...), and Kent and others have already done some research into them. Mozilla has indicated that it is willing to pay for someone with expertise in this area to produce a public report listing the pros and cons of each option from Thunderbird's perspective, as input to the Council's decision on which path to pursue.

Mozilla will be engaging Simon Phipps to do this work. Those of you who know Simon will know he is an experienced open source community member and an expert in the particular area of legal structures for open source. He was previously President of the OSI, and while in that capacity entirely reorganized that organization for the better. I know of no-one else with a better grasp of the options and their characteristics.

Simon is already involved in this situation because he's been asked by The Document Foundation to work out a plan for how might become a fiscal home for. We are asking him to expand his remit to consider the other potential options also. I feel that even though he is associated with one of the potential fiscal homes in question, he has the integrity to be objective in his assessments.

The decision on what path to take rests, of course, with the Thunderbird leadership.

Excerpt from a report entitled Finding a home for Thunderbird, dated 7 April 2016, prepared by Simon Phipps at the request of the Mozilla Foundation:


 * I believe there are three viable choices for a future home for the Thunderbird Project; Software Freedom Conservancy, The Document Foundation and a new deal at the Mozilla Foundation.
 * The Board has discussed the possibility of Thunderbird joining TDF as its third project, and has given its approval for discussions to proceed. TDF has not made a final decisions whether to host Thunderbird yet and would only take a final decision once the request to join was made.

In Thunderbird Planning on Google Groups topic entitled Introducing Myself, started on 28 April 2016, Italo Vignoli - LibreOffice Marketing & PR wrote:

I have just subscribed to tb-planning, to contribute - if possible - to the discussion. I am in charge of marketing and PR at LibreOffice, and a happy Thunderbird user since ages (actually, using version 45 on Ubuntu and MacOS). 28 April 2016

I would personally love to see Thunderbird within TDF, but - being a community member who has fighted for the independence of the software project I was contributing to as a volunteer - I completely understand the challenge faced by Thunderbird community council. 30 April 2016

In the blog article entitled The Thunderbird hypothesis, on 1 May 2016 [http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/mc/ Charles-H. Schulz, Marketing at TDF] wrote:

I [Charles-H. Schulz] would be very happy to see Thunderbird join us [TDF]

Concrete ideas of further integration of LibreOffice and Thunderbird
Changes in LibreOffice:
 * Access to multiple Thunderbird address books.

Changes/extensions for Thunderbird:
 * Provide a theme for Thunderbird to make look and feel more similar to LibreOffice.
 * Thunderbird currently does not provide a preview of documents (except for .txt and .html). A preview of ODF (and all other supported file types) could be possible via the integration of LibreOffice Kit into Thunderbird. This could be a joint Thunderbird & LibreOffice project for GSOC 2016.
 * Possibility to use LibreOffice Writer as email editor in Thunderbird.
 * Enable Contact Notes to supports complex formatting and pictures. Notes for a Contact in an Address Book could use LibreOffice Writer/Kit. Notes could be saved in.

Directions for Thunderbird&rsquo;s legal and financial home
Summary of information available at Thunderbird Planning on Google Groups.

Funding
Ideas to fund the development of the LibreOffice personal information manager:
 * A share of the savings are realizing by using the LibreOffice productivity suite could be given to TDF;
 * Crowd-funding; and/or
 * Work with company/partner shareholders.

Quotes
Tweets on 23 September 2015 from CollaboraOffice:
 * “If our competitors are enormous, our vision must be too: we're targeting every cloud” – Niall McCarthy at LibOCon 2015
 * “At LibreOffice we now have 300 developers active on a recurring yearly basis; on par with Microsoft Office” – Italo Vignoli at LibOCon 2015

On 23 September 2015, Michael Meeks, General Manager at Collabora Productivity, presentation entitled “LibreOffice and Collabora” states on page 2: “Mission: Make Open Source the de-facto standard in the industry.”

Interview conducted on 18 August 2015, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst: “I use Thunderbird more than any other application.”

Italo Vignoli: “I have stumbled on free software when I was 50, searching for an alternative to Microsoft Office. I was fed up with Microsoft Outlook, the worst piece of software ever developed. I am now over 60, and after ten years in the free software trenches, I have some ideas to share.”

Italo Vignoli mail of 2 December 2015: One of the reasons behind the success of the LibreOffice project is the sharp focus on a single application, which is not going to change anytime soon. We are already working on the Android and the Cloud versions of LibreOffice, and this is more than enough - in term of global effort - for a community based project. So, please avoid any speculation based on rumors, as they might be intentionally created by our competitors. Italo Vignoli tb-planning Google Group post of 30 April 2016: “I would personally love to see Thunderbird within TDF”.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that Outlook is successful because of the integration of email, contacts, calendar, etc. The product has become a platform.