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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

Huh, I was going to post this story, but I thought it was not allowed because it's a job posting and I had to wait until the Who is Hiring thread.

So, if posting jobs for working on free applications is ok outside of Who Is Hiring, let me try to advertise this job for another free email client, Mailpile, which got killed when I tried to post it earlier:

https://www.mailpile.is/jobs/

I currently use Evolution for email, which is ok and I've gotten used to its limitations, but I would love a more modern client!

Edit: I guess it's not ok. I'm confused.

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Thunderbird is a popular mail client that has at times had a pretty uncertain future. I imagine that azdle posted this less as a notification of a job listing and more as a sign that Thunderbird is going to stick around and evolve. That's the difference.

I see. Those things, except for the popularity, also apply to Mailpile. I guess that's the big difference.

The Mozilla foundation is also a registered 501(c)(3). Is Mailpile? I don't see anything about that on your page?

No, Mailpile isn't a charity.

But the Mozilla foundation isn't the one fronting money for this job, is it? Doesn't that money come from the Mozilla Corporation? Hm, the job ad says that MoFo is the fiscal home, but the candidate will be hired via UpWork.

I'm really a bit confused about how money flows around Mozilla.

The money does not come from Corp, TB is moving away from Corp infrastructure. The money comes from donations: https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/05/thunderbirds-fu...

>The money comes from donations //

The money presumably came from selling FF users to Google but Mozilla Corp decided spending on TB was wasting money.

Whose driving this at Mozilla Corp? Seems like a sea-change to very money & business orientated position, like Mozilla's is basically being privatised and unprofitable (in the financial sense) parts are being ditched.

The "Key Issues" of the Mozilla Foundation (https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/foundation/issues/) appear to fit well with providing a FOSS email client, as otherwise people are going to go with Google/MS/Apple primarily which moves email in a way that contradicts the aims laid out there.

[Interesting that the Mozilla Foundation use Google for hosting files (eg https://mzl.la/foundation-strategy), seems a bit contradictory.]

If you think something is a bad post, you can flag it and/or mail the mods. It shouldn't be too confusing that making your own bad post isn't the optimal response.

For what it's worth, I agree with you this thing is a bad post - it's just a job ad. You can try to divine what Mozilla's Thunderbird plans are from it but that's true for lots of job ads, they're still job ads. An article about Mozilla's actual Thunderbird plans could be a good article, even if it had links to job ads.

I think the original article is ok, since it is generally interesting (news about Thunderbird, opens discussion about Thunderbird, Mozilla, their technologies) and not just a job ad.

I don't know of a rule against job ads in general. I would guess generally such would be mostly just not interesting.

YC company job listings are a special case though, they appear on the front page without voting possibility. This had been the case since the beginning of HN.

Well, the Mailpile job ad also says that they're trying to make it easier to install on Windows and macOS and that they got the funds from the bitcoin fluctuations. It's also not "just" a job ad.

Mailpile is interesting because it's trying to give a convenient frontend for encryption. Maybe if encryption had a better UI, more email would be encrypted.

Jobs post are not allowed. From the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Can I post a job ad?

> Please don't post job ads as submissions to HN.

> A regular "Who Is Hiring?" thread appears on the first weekday of each month. Most job ads are welcome there. [...]

> The other kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. [...]

But IMHO this is an special case that deserve an exception. (Usually following the rules the 100% of the time blindly is not optimal.)

This is a very big/popular project, and it is the first hire, so the are changing the internal organization of the developers. (The #87 hire will not be interesting.)

Thanks - I was obviously too lazy to check our the FAQ.

Edit: I guess it's not ok. I'm confused.

Your post is essentially offtopic. You should submit it as a separate topic.

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