As you may have noticed if you are running a Thunderbird 3.3 alpha or nightly, Lightning has changed its version number from 1.1a1pre to 1.0b4pre. I’d like to take a moment and explain why we changed this and what effects it may have.
As mentioned on the Calendar Versions page, we need to follow the release cycle of Thunderbird. Users will (and have, in the past) massively complain if a new version of Thunderbird is released without a corresponding Lightning version. Although there is no final plan yet when Thunderbird 3.3 will be released, the ballpark figure is some time in April. This would mean we have something between 3 and 7 weeks to complete our next release.
If we continue our previous plan and release Lightning 1.0b3, which would work on Thunderbird 3.1 and 3.2, we would have just enough time to complete that release and would need a near to equal amount of time to prepare for a Thunderbird 3.3 compatible release. As you can imagine, this is not feasible.
Therefore we have decided to leave out 1.0b3 and concentrate on releasing 1.0b4, which will be compatible with Thunderbird 3.3.
For localizers, this means they will have to make sure l10n-central is correctly translated. Resulting l10n builds can be found here. Pike is working hard to make sure the l10n dashboard can keep up with our branch switching. As soon as he is done, we can officially announce string freeze and accept sign-offs. This of course doesn’t mean you need to wait. We have checked in all bugs that require string changes, so go ahead and translate!
For Seamonkey, this means that Lightning 1.0b4 will support Seamonkey 2.1, which is currently in its beta phase.
In turn, we no longer have a need for 1.0b3pre nightly builds. This might be unfortunate for Thunderbird 3.1 users that want to stay up to date with the latest Lightning features. On the other hand, the list of bugs to be fixed for the next beta doesn’t contain any more new features. We will concentrate on fixing bugs and regressions to make sure Lightning 1.0b4 doesn’t cause any surprises for your daily work.
Can you please drop the letter ‘b’ in the version and use normal version numbers like everyone else?
I’m happy to do this, once we feel that the release is ready for the standards one might expect from 1.0. Using betas might have been a wrong decision, but we can’t go back to 0.9.1 and we’re just not ready to call it 1.0 yet.
I regret the lost of Thunderbird 3.1 compatibility. Lightning is needed and useful in enterprise and administration environment. In those environments we can’t change the install Thunderbird each time there is a new major version of it because it’s a part of a system. We needed stability. In our case we made add-ons for Thunderbird 3.1 (www.trustedbird.org) and can’t remake them for each major version of Thunderbird (3.2, 3.3, ..)
I regret the lost of Thunderbird 3.1 compatibility. Lightning is needed and useful in enterprise and administration environment. In those environments we can’t change the install Thunderbird each time there is a new major version of it because it’s a part of a system. We needed stability. In our case we made add-ons for Thunderbird 3.1 (www.trustedbird.org) and can’t remake them for each major version of Thunderbird (3.2, 3.3, ..)
Hi,
I don’t know if this is the right place to post it:
Is there any chance of having a Lightning that is compatible with Windows and Linux Thunderbird versions, just like any other .XPIs?
I have a dualboot (XP and Ubuntu) so each time I switch between them I need to re-install the Lightning version of the actual Thunderbird I’m using.
Thanks
Joao
Suel, jr, I’m really sorry about this. Nevertheless, I do hope you understand my motivations here.
We have been checking in most of the patches for 1.0b4pre also to the branch that would lead to 1.0b3. Although this is far from ideal, if you would like a version of Lightning that contains most of the latest patches, then you can download an 1.0b3pre nightly build from http://ftp.mozilla.org (latest-comm-1.9.2). Note however this is unsupported.
If your companies would like to invest in Lightning, please do contact me and I’m sure we can find a solution.
Joao, unfortunately there is a bit more work required to make a combined .xpi file. We currently can’t do this. I’d suggest using different profiles for windows and linux and then softlinking the calendar-data directory. Also make sure you have the calendar.registry.* entries in sync between both profiles (found in prefs.js).
I have to agree with Suel. Enterprise/Company environments cannot be in a constant state of flux. That doesn’t work. Stability is always the #1 priority. Email and Calendaring of all things is core to any business and has to be the most stable, reliable, taken-for-granted component the user community ever works with in a given day. Business also doesn’t have time to be constantly retraining users on new features, interfaces or more generally new versions of software.
I have previously managed MS Exchange in a >300 user environment with multiple sites. I now work in a smaller, but very fast growing company with >60 email users and I’ve managed to keep it all on a linux Dovecot IMAP and DAViCal server with Thunderbird/Lightning clients until more recently.
M$ has been on my heals the whole time because Outlook and Exchange are what people know in the business realm. As our company has grown, our needs have quickly expanded as well. We’re now using personal and public calendars, doing meeting invites and so forth. I now have 20 Outlook users (coupled with iCal4OL), though, that just couldn’t deal with all the little quirks and shortcomings in Thunderbird and Lightning that aren’t getting taken care of. Going from Thunderbird 2.0.0.x to 3.1.6 was a good improvement and that bought me some time and the newer Lightning is much better (1.0b2 vs. 0.9), but, I’m still dealing with calendaring issues and they’re going to break me. That means I’ll have to implement Exchange here and everyone knows that once that’s been done, there will be no going back; that’s always a permanent move for any company. Nobody ever spends $20,000 and then says “Oh, let’s dump it…”. I’ll lose all the flexibilities of my linux server and OpenSource and have to deal once again with M$’s lock-box mentality and screwed up approach to logic, particularly overly elaborate complexity (they wouldn’t know simple if it bit them in the backside).
Having said all that, I’m afraid that what I see here with the Lightning and Thunderbird projects are a bunch of people chasing after the future rather than focusing on the present. Don’t get me wrong, the future’s good and we definitely need to have a vision and a plan for it, but we’re not going to get there if the present isn’t taken care of. Thunderbird 3.3? 3.1 is what’s posted as “Production” on the download page. Lightning 1.1a1pre or 1.0b4? 1.0b2 is what’s on the download page. You’re focusing on all the bleeding edge stuff and not on the stable production stuff. If you’re not careful, that will sink you and all those of us trying to implement your projects. We’re in a very key time of opportunity right now where the tables could turn greatly in our (OpenSource community) favor. PLEASE, tread carefully. Don’t just think about home users or people that like the latest bleeding edge shiny stuff. If you don’t get hooks into the business realm with these key components, then we’re all just wasting our time and need to go back to implementing really expensive, overly complex proprietary software and drinking the M$ koolaid. Sorry, but these are part of the basic facts of life and especially business.
I’m using Thunderbird 3.1.9 and Lightning at work. When I eventually go to version 3.3, and the updated Lightning, will my extensive calendar data be preserved?
Thanks for your answer Philipp, but as Tim said, if we can’t have stability with Thunderbird and Lightning, we’ll have to deal once again with M$’s lock-box mentality and screwed up approach to logic.
I’am in contact with David Asher about our development about Trustedbird, and i proposed him to make like Canonical with Ubuntu. That’s to have Long Time Support version of Thunderbird which could be 3.1 ou 3.3 (support of Gecko 2.0) for two or tree years. And frequently version which could follow Firefox issues. In that case i think it would be possible to have a LTS version of lightning and other extensions and a short time version which could follow frequently version of Thunderbird.
hi:
The business world need what Suel and Tim says. Mozilla foundation people most read their comments and think about future of calendar.
hi
i want to add the persian calendar(jalali) to sunbird.
can you help me?
thanks
It is crazy that people are asking developers to work harder for free and sacrifice more of their free time, time with their families, time in their paid work, to profit their own companies. Really, go find a developer and paid them to do this work for you. Or sacrifice your own free time, family time, paid-work time to do the work yourself. It doesn’t sound nice what I say but this is exactly what you are telling people to do for you. The point of open-source is that there is no lock-down and you can always get the work done by yourself or by paying someone else.
mehdi, I’ll contact you via email shortly.
how can I convert my 1.0beta2 calendar to the latest 1.0beta4?
John, you merely have to install Thunderbird 3.3 Alpha and Lightning 1.0b4pre from http://ftp.mozilla.org.
what about the cache functionality in the new version? will it be catered? But the exchange data provider is obsolete and there are no further developments.
Will exchange calendar work in the new lightning?
I want to make an answer to the unknown person who post on April 30, 2011 and said :”It is crazy that people are asking developers to work harder for free and sacrifice more of their free time, time with their families, time in their paid work, to profit their own companies. Really, go find a developer and paid them to do this work for you”.
We did it. Our projet is call “trustedbird” (www.trustedbird.org). We make plugins for Thunderbird, security improvments. A part of our code is in Thunderbird 3.x Trunk, and it’s OpenSoftware (GPL, MPL and LGPL) : get it.
But in administration and we can’t change our software 4 time a year ; we need stability for users.
@Suel
Great! But if you are looking for stability then I don’t understand why you need to update to 1.0b4. You can always backport critical fixes to 1.0b2 for Thunderbird 3.1. I am sure the developers will be happy if someone does this work for them. Since there seems to be some interest on such a stable branch, perhaps you can convince the developers to advertise it in the main lightning webpage and attract more help from other third-parties. In fact, Ubuntu LTS version is stuck with Thunderbird 3.1, so they will need to track updates to 3.1 closely.
Suel, 1052:
I understand both sides very well. For a company it means a tremendous amount of work to support the latest versions of any product, therefore most opt to use an older version where bugs already have workarounds and eventual problems have been found.
This model works for most software, but in the special case of Lightning where manpower is just not very high, its impossible to do two releases at once. I have asked for company support from different companies in the past to release for an older version, but haven’t gotten much reply (neither yes nor no).
While of course I would appreciate more support (both from companies and community), I’m totally open to alternative ideas that would work out for all of us.
I know this isn’t related to the post, but I didn’t know how else to ask. Are you excited about this announcement?
http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.com/2011/05/getting-organized-with-tasks-api.html
I don’t know how long I’ve been waiting exactly, but I’m sure it’s been at well over a year since I voted for a Task API, starred issues 985/987 in Google groups, and began waiting patiently.
Now we’re all just waiting on Lightning. Let us know when we can expect this integration. I’d be interested in getting involved if there’s anything I can do. I’m a web developer, so I know Javascript, and I’ve done some pretty extensive projects in C++ in the past as well.
I am very excited! Work is in progress!