[projectvrm] VRM tools

[Doc Searls < >]

I've re-named this thread to focus on the topic brought up below.

On Oct 13, 2011, at 8:41 AM, Brian Behlendorf wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Oct 2011, Luk Vervenne wrote:
>> Introducing the individual as ‘a genuine stakeholder in his own processes’ 
>> (note: in my opinion a precondition for BOTH user-centric and user-driven 
>> processes, but that's for another discussion), means we – in addition – 
>> now also need a personal server / infrastructure to talk to organisations 
>> as the client. (by the way, the meshing with 4th parties is where trust 
>> becomes interesting).
> 
> Personal sovereignty is a huge issue for us at Mozilla, which this article 
> captured better than most others have recently:
> 
> https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/241661/which_browser_has_your_back_that_would_be_firefox.html

Good one, thanks!

> This came up most recently for us in discussions about the future of 
> Thunderbird.  If everyone's using @gmail.com-ish webmail or their corporate 
> webmail, what's the value of an open source, independent desktop mail 
> client?  After all, great mail clients are actually hard work, people's 
> expectations are constantly being raised by the webmail offerings, and many 
> users are using SMTP email less and less. Revisioning Thunderbird as a 
> messaging tool for all sorts of protocols, to be even more directly built 
> on top of the Firefox toolchain, and to be a more sophisticated manager of 
> people's personal data and preferences, seemed to have enough value to 
> continue pursuing.  Going forward, could the lowly mail client, the 
> original social networking tool, be the front-end to an aggregated 
> experience over FB, G+, the corporate intranet, etc?  Could it help us 
> bridge users to a decentralized social networking future?  Those are 
> questions without clear answers yet, but closing off those possibilities 
> before knowing the answers seemed like an opportunity lost, so we've 
> continued to invest in Thunderbird.

And a huge thank-you for that too.

Question... Did you face the same thing with Apache back in the earliest 
days, when Netscape had the leading commercial Web server offering, and it 
looked like maybe the purely commercial interests were going to win this 
thing?

> Does thinking about the mail client in this way create some ideas for 
> wireframes for demos?  I once mused with Doc that what would be awesome is 
> a client-side tool that does for emailed purchase receipts what TripIt does 
> with flight confirmation emails - parses them and adds them to your 
> calendar and makes them understandable in ways that separate individual 
> emails aren't.

I still think that is a simple and rocking idea.

>  If we did this with receipts, we could help people visualize their 
> spending, keep track of their inventory of purchased media or consumer 
> electronics (where did I buy this computer from again?) and maybe even 
> analyze the data and make recommendations based on others' purchasing 
> habits.  All client-side, all on behalf of the user, Managing their Vendor 
> Relations.
> 
> Brian

Yep. Let's bring that one up at IIW too.

Doc