[Discuss] Thunderbird has an IM client?

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Richard Pieri)]

Tom Metro wrote:
> When an application subsumes the functionality of an entirely separate
> application, and you don't even notice, you might be suffering from
> feature bloat.

I'm going to play Devil's advocate on this. Thunderbird started life as 
the Mail, Address Book and Composer components of the Netscape suite. 
Which is to say that it started out as everything /except/ the browser 
which became Firefox. Thunderbird has always been a two-way or multi-way 
communications point. That's why it made sense adding LDAP, NNTP, RSS, 
Atom and IRC (in SeaMonkey) to its supported protocols. IM is a widely 
used communications tool. It makes sense to add the IM protocols to the 
suite.

It's not bloat. It's an attempt to maintain relevance in a rapidly 
changing world.

-- 
Rich P.