I've been a Thunderbird user for a while, but the LDAP functionality in the email addressing lookups is becoming quite annoying. We have an external LDAP server that is accessible from both our intranet and the internet when properly authenticated. It leverages both our market leading Directory Server and our Directory Proxy, both part of Directory Server Enterprise Edition. This allows me to set the directory and avoid having to switch it depending on how I'm connected. However, Thunderbird's LDAP implementation makes using it painful. When it functions properly, lookups while composing email messages works great. But when it doesn't you have to wait for the LDAP searches to timeout. It can take a long time to address an email to lots of people. The address book is even worse.

There was a day when I would have hunted down the code and participated. I'm too lazy and stupid now. I could stay at a Holiday Inn Express (which I don't mind), but asking my buddy Neil Wilson to fix it is probably a faster path to what I want. This is when having a well read blog would be nice. Oh well.

You gotta love the internet and blogging. While following this article by Ashlee Vance from the Register sharing how JBoss CEO Marc Fleury called Redhat an open source pretender that "doesn't create JACK". Ashlee points out that this has been attempted to be erased from memory, but alas, the internet makes the elephant look like a piker when it comes to memory management :-). You can try to remove foot from mouth, but there will always be plenty of people that will make sure everyone knows that's where it was. Pretty funny.

One comment Fleury made (courtesy of internet caching) that I took offense at was

SUN is always a bit hypocritical when talking about open source, just like IBM is. These companies embrace open source where and when it enables them to compete against MSFT but when it comes to their own beef (do you see IBM open sourcing DB2/Websphere?) they show their true colors, and trust me it isn't pretty.

...

So to me both SUN and RH are open source "wannabees", or as one of my developers put "open source girly men".

Hey! Who you calling girly!? What would we have to open source to not be a wannabe? Stay tuned!