Sunbird 1.0 beta1 now available for download (last release of Sunbird)

The Calendar Project is proud to report, that (finally) the 1.0 beta1 release of Sunbird has been completed and is now available via the Sunbird website.

18 months after the 0.9, we’re more than happy to get the nearly 500 bugfixes and improvements into the hands of our users. Notable improvements of this release are:

  • You can now define multiple alarms for a single event
  • CalDAV support and interoperability with various CalDAV servers have been improved
  • The application stability, performance and memory consumption have been improved

Sunbird 1.0 beta1 is available for Windows, Mac OS X (universal builds) Linux 32bit and Linux 64bit in 37 different languages including English. Please read the release notes for Sunbird 1.0 beta1 before downloading.

As previously announced (here, here, here and here) this will be the last release of Sunbird from the Calendar Project. From now on, we will focus our development efforts exclusively on the Lightning add-on and its next release Lightning 1.0 beta2.

Thank you again to all our developers, contributors, localizers, testers, and supporters. We would not be able to do this without your assistance!

29 comments

  1. Shouldn’t that be “latest version”?
    “Last” makes it sound like development stops after this.

  2. Also, the bold text looked like an add >_>

  3. Bill Gianopoulos

    Perhaps the link to the Lightning add-on should not specifically link to the German AMO site?

  4. WebDevHobo, that’s right, this is the last release for Sunbird. As Simon points out, from now on only Lightning will be developed. So, as long as Sunbird concerns, the development has stopped forever (unless someone jumps in and takes over).

  5. So it is the first beta of 1.0, and you’re stopping Sunbird support?
    Why not 1.0 final?

  6. It’s really sad that Sunbird will no longer be actively developed, and I’d love to help although I know nothing about writing programs, but surely it would make more sense to complete the 1.0 release of Lightning, and then use the basis of that as the Sunbird 1.0 final and last release? Or is there simply too much work in fixing things from lightning over to Sunbird?

  7. Yeah. I am sad because this makes me the OH my calendar has to be in my mail stupidness even further.

  8. Lightning should not be an addin,
    it should be an integral part of Thunderbird !

  9. You did not fix the PRINTING BUG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  10. I’m also a bit disappointed that this last beta ends up the Sunbird story, but I understand why the calendar team had to take this decision.
    However, it would be interesting to have some feedback from the team on the following topics :
    1. Updates of Sunbird 0.9
    In Sunbird 0.9, if I go to ‘Help’->’Check for Updates’ I get the answer :’There are no new updates available’
    Is it because of the Beta status of this release ?
    On the other side, all the Sunbird links on the main page of the Calendar project ( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ ) point to that 1.0 beta1 release …
    2. Roadmap
    It would be nice to update the roadmap page ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Roadmap ) :
    separate Sunbird and Lightning releases, give some explanations for the numbering of the releases, and give estimated dates for future releases
    3. Thunderbird option
    Talking about Sunbird’s possible future vision in another post of this weblog ( http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar/2009/08/how_to_save_sunbird.html ), Philipp
    mentionned a possible option that would start Thunderbird with only calendar relevant UI. For the end user, that would be quite similar to what is Sunbird today.
    Any news about that option ?
    4. Donations
    Since more than one year, it’s possible to make donations to the calendar project. How generous are the calendar users ?
    Is there enough money to fund specific students/contributors projects ?
    Thanks.

  11. CRYING shame if Sunbird is left to die short of 1.0 final! The PortableApps Sunbird Portable version is a great portable alternative to Lightning, but that will die, too.
    Thunderbird/Lighting goes back to the old bloated, harder to use formula of bundling (most recently SeaMonkey, which is also less impressive than the stand-alone apps.
    Who is so dim that he cannot open two or three apps, for the increased ease of use?

  12. @Dave: Having a separate calendar app from my e-mail isn’t about being “dim”, it’s about integration and functionality. For office-level calendar use, e-mail is the primary means of integration. Even if you have CalDAV there are a number of functions that tend to be performed via e-mail: inter-office calendaring, invitation responses…
    Deciding on supporting the e-mail plug-in vs. the standalone calendar program based on these criteria was IMHO a wise decision, painful as it was to have to make the decision in the first place.

  13. @Cedric:
    Let me address your questions here:

    The missing update from 0.9 to 1.0 beta1 is a bug and will be fixed within the next few days.
    A new roadmap is in the works, but it will take some time before we can make it public./li>
    The Thunderbird option has not yet been worked upon. As we have our hands full with the regular Lightning work, this would be a great project for an outside developer. Anybody that is interested in this, should contact me.

    I will post a donations update soon.

  14. Normally it is obvious to see when something is wrong, in the case of Sunbird much more so. I suspect that to draw the wrong conclusion shows us that something else is going on. Who is feathering who’s nest?

  15. Hi.
    We have a huge issue making it difficult to use Lightning/Sunbird in Israel probably due to timezone typo. Can you please ask someone to look further to this issue? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504299
    I hope we can get it fixed before the next release, because it impact the overall user experience for people from IL.
    Thanks!

  16. Sad to see the end of Sunbird.
    Can anyone recommen an alternate open source calendar app? I use Thunderbird all the time, but like having them separate.
    If no equal open source, can anyone recommend a well priced commercial app?
    Please don’t sugest google calendar as an alternative. I don’t trust google with my data.
    Damian

  17. OMG! Mozilla team.. Sunbird is a terrific piece of software. Can you pls bring it to 1.0 “Final” and then stop instead of stopping it in beta. This is a nightmare situation!!! Pls consider. :(

  18. Is it possible to disable all email-related menu items and toolbars in a thunderbird / lightning bundle? It will then work just like another Sunbird. In other words, I would like to have a stripped-down version of thunderbird that does not have any mail capacity.

  19. I did have a quick look at the “as announced here,here,here and here” and didn’t find any mention that beta 1 of release 1 would be the last for sunbird. Only that release 1 would be.
    What a weird decision. I am sorry that it has all got so bad. I’m afraid I blame Mozilla for not putting sufficient resources in and for not seeing the importance of it.

  20. Ending releases on a beta is just offensive.

  21. We have rehashed a few times the Sunbird story already (although as someone said, it was supposed to stop at version 1.0 final not beta 1 – but I think they must be close enough…) and we know that the decision to stop development is not because the team does not want to continue, but because they just don’t have the manpower to continue. The only hope is that some community group forms – similar to what happened with seamonkey – that will port back the Lightning stuff to Sunbird and make it progress…
    Anyway, let me say that this new version of Sunbird (beta or not beta) rocks and remove some of the issue I had. And so far no real bugs, thus I’d say if it is a beta it’s pretty close to real stuff :-)
    Thanks guys for that (beta :-) one!
    (and to everyone without computer skills who wants to see Sunbird stay – and I know many webmail users who want that – just go on, advertize it on your blog on your websites, everywhere, build up the user base and increase the chance some dev or some company will notice and be interested in pursuing the development)

  22. I love very much having Sunbird separated from my mail client.
    I hope that Sunbird will be continued in the future.
    Anyway, here there are regular nightly buils of Sunbird 1.0 Beta 2:
    http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/sunbird/nightly/
    Does it mean that someone is going on with its development?

  23. Any news regarding auto-updates Sunbird 0.9 –> 1.0b1? Should we file a bug so providing this update won’t be forgotten?

  24. Marko Oreskovic

    This is Totally INSANITY.
    I user to use long time ago Mozilla suite (before Seamonkey and Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird) and I used calendar addon and I was VERY happy in that time.
    THEN, some loonie at Mozilla decided to kill calendar addon for Seamonkey and I could not continue to use calendaring in Mozillla based Seamonkey (And Mozilla withdraw itself from Seamonkey development)
    Now Finally calendar addon is Back where it should be in the first place and Seamonkey is considered Mozilla app.
    Only problem is users have already switched LONG time ago to Sunbird or Thunderbird+addon.
    But that wan not before the ALL that suffering I witnessed with all sorts of bugs through 0.x releases, as a matter a fact, 0.9 is the one that is mostly usable to me after long time.
    And now what?
    You want to chase away new users you accumulated over years with Sunbird?
    There is PLAINLY INSANITY at Mozilla if you ask me.
    You are throwing away users I hope the guy that wanted to
    1) Kill Mozilla suite and not wanting to do with Seamonkey for years
    2) Killed calendar addon for Seamonkey suite
    3) Killing Sunbird whan users finally get used to it (and Share data via webdav between multiple calendaring solutions with caching)
    I am sad, people at Mozilla are so much insane to to see that unstable things and Raping their Calendaring user base will not get them any benefit whatsoever.
    And who cares for users, anyway?

  25. Bruce Tech Guy

    Just noticed that Sunbird development has halted.
    Very sad. :(
    Since I am not using Thunderbird at all currently, it seems the new requirement to use latest Mozilla Calendar means we must install Thunderbird, then install Lightning add-on, then presumably import my profile.
    But why force us to use Thunderbird email just to get the Calendar program?
    (admittedly Thunderbird is a good email client, just not what I am using now for my email)
    So sad to see Sunbird stalled at my last v1.0b2pre nightly.

  26. Too bad! I won’t use Lightning, cause if Thunderbird is getting updated, I guess, the extension will not be compatible with the new version as so many other add-ons….

  27. Sad, just discovered this as I’m setting up a family members new PC and she’s been happily using Sunbird for years.
    I too don’t use Thunderbird, Sunbird has been the calendar app of choice around our office and for my family.
    I gave up on Thunderbird about a year ago switching to a customized internal web mail system mostly because it was a nightmare trying to search imap email from a low speed remote location, and the web mail shines for this.
    I’m not sure I’d be happy with a kludge such as Thunderbird stripped to only the calendar interface, but I’d be willing to give it a try, but the lat time I looked at Thunderbird (A friends Machine) it looked to me like they’d gotten enamored with the seriously counter intuitive idea of Tabs in Email, and come hell or high water it was going to be put in there, usability be damned.

  28. SailorAlphaCentauri

    It’s a shame that you discontinued Sunbird, but you never fixed the problem where .9 does not find the update to 1.0 (I just tried it today). Since I have no use for an e-mail application (I was using Sunbird to help me keep track of my thesis deadlines), what do you recommend as an alternative (other than Google Calendar)?
    I understand that you had to make a decision to abandon one project for another, but will there ever come a time where Sunbird will get some attention? For those of us who are not using these programs for work or in an interconnected sort of way, switching to Thunder and Lightening is not a worthwhile option.

  29. I have used Lightning and Sunbird. Sunbird is a good program and useful, and Lightning is not. It is as simple as that