Perhaps someone can clarify a point for me:
I'm under the impression that whatever the foundation or project that adopts Thunderbird, it would have to be half-rewritten to get rid of its legacy (Gecko/XPCOM/XUL) codebase.
Is that correct? Has anyone estimated how much time/money/manpower that would require?
IMHO Thunderbird should replace:
- Gecko with Blink
- XPCOM with normal plugins (I don't think anyone is making any real use of the unique features of XPCOM, e. g. the universal binary interface)
- XUL with QML/WPF/alike.
Qt would provide a full-stack alternative:
- Gecko -> QtWebEngine
- XPCOM -> QPluginLoader
- XUL -> QML
Maintainability and performance would increase exponentially.
Is that correct? Has anyone estimated how much time/money/manpower that would require?