Mozilla Sunbird is a discontinued
free and open-source,
cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...
calendar application that was developed by the
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...
,
Sun Microsystems and many volunteers.
[Mozilla contributors list](_blank)
''Mozilla.org'' Mozilla Sunbird was described as "a cross platform standalone calendar application based on Mozilla's
XUL
XUL ( ), which stands for XML User Interface Language, is a user interface markup language developed by Mozilla. XUL is an XML dialect for writing graphical user interfaces, enabling developers to write user interface elements in a manner sim ...
user interface language".
[The Sunbird Project - Standalone Calendar](_blank)
- Main project page describing the project. Announced in July 2003,
- MozillaZine article announcing the Sunbird Project Sunbird was a standalone version of the
Mozilla Calendar Project.
It was developed as a standalone version of the
Lightning
Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an avera ...
calendar and scheduling extension for the
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The projec ...
and
SeaMonkey
SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape ...
mail clients. Development of Sunbird was ended with release 1.0 beta 1 to focus on development of
Mozilla Lightning
The Lightning project, announced on December 22, 2004, and developed by the Mozilla Foundation, produces an extension that adds calendar and scheduling functionality to the Mozilla Thunderbird mail and newsgroup client and SeaMonkey internet s ...
. The latest development version of Sunbird remains 1.0b1 from January 2010, and no later version has been announced. Unlike Lightning, Sunbird no longer receives updates to its time zone database.
Sun contributions
Sun Microsystems contributed significantly to the Lightning extension project to provide users with a free and open-source alternative to
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...
by combining
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...
and Thunderbird/Lightning. Sun's key focus areas in addition to general bug fixing were calendar views, team/collaboration features and support for the
Sun Java System Calendar Server
The Sun Java System Calendar Server was Sun's calendar (scheduling) server. The currently available version is 6.3 which is now part of the Sun Java System Communications Suite.
Users can access their calendar and task list items using a variety ...
.
Since both projects share the same code base, any contribution to one is a direct contribution to the other.
Trademark issues and Iceowl
Although it is released under a
MPL, MPL/
GPL
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
/
LGPL tri-license, there are trademark restrictions in place on Mozilla Sunbird which prevent the distribution of modified versions with the Mozilla branding.
As a result, the
Debian project created
Iceowl, a virtually identical version without the branding restrictions.
Release history
See also
*
Lightning
Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an avera ...
for
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The projec ...
and
SeaMonkey
SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape ...
*
List of personal information managers
The following is a list of personal information managers ( PIMs) and online organizers.
Applications
Discontinued applications
See also Comparisons
* Comparison of email clients
* Comparison of file managers
* Comparison of note-taki ...
References
External links
*
MozillaWikiThe Sunbird development blogSunbird Portableby
PortableApps.com
PortableApps.com is a website offering free applications for Windows that have been specially packaged for portability. These portable applications are intended to be used from removable media such as USB flash drives. User data is stored in a ...
Linux sunbird installer
{{FLOSS
Mozilla
Free calendaring software
Personal information managers
Cross-platform software
C++ software
Gecko-based software
Portable software
2003 software
Software using the Mozilla license
Software that uses XUL
Software that uses SQLite
Discontinued software