Me:
So can you introduce yourself and gives us your age , the place you are from , the OS you use thunderbird on daily ?
nshopik:
my name is Nikolay Shopik, I’m 27 years old was born and grow up in Moscow, Russia. I’m on XP but have plans upgrade to Windows 7 as soon it will available
Me:
How long have you been using Thunderbird , what do you use it for (Email, Rss) ?
nshopik:
If I’m not mistaken since end of 2006 or early 2007, I only using Email. I was doing RSS in stand-alone app till 2004 and replace it with web based rss readers.
nshopik:
forgot to add I’m reading news too
Me:
Now let’s get to the QA specifics part ….
Me:
How long have you participated at triaging Thunderbird MailNews bugs ?
nshopik:
I’ve been “signed up” in April 2008
Me:
can you described your sign-up process ? was it complicated ? was it hard to become an active member ?
nshopik:
My first bugs dates back to 2007, so I know little bit. Well it’s not so difficult at all. I have done QA in my past for my own programs and friends of mine. Only problem you will face to be active member is free time
Me:
How much time do you spend helping Thunderbird quality assurance ?
nshopik:
When I was started in 2008 it took about of 8-12 hours per week. Now I have little bit lower available time and change my priorities on component specific bugs this takes no more 3 hours per week
Me:
Which components do you have special bonds with ?
nshopik:
I’m mostly interested in enterprise/universities environment specific bugs.You know every year TB is losing more and more regular users who tend to use web-based email. They already have problems understand all type of technologies and to know what IMAP or SMTP servers are and what its hostnames. People can barely remember their passwords contain 8 charters.
Me:
nshopik: this mean Ldap, kerberos . Is it fun participating ? what do you get from helping (joy , pride) ?
nshopik:
Yeah – LDAP, Kerberos, Certeficated based auth, Autoconfiguration via MCD and core IMAP, SMTP protocols. I’m really enjoying helping resolving issues, there some of pride. I’d like to help someone to resolve issue, this encourage people to suggest such product to others instead switching app. And others could be another user or who can even help with providing patch to resolve issue. Also I…
…don’t like monopoly of Microsoft email-based products in enterprise segment. But I’m not MS hater I was Microsoft ONLY IT guy in past.
Me:
So do you feel like Thunderbird 3 is something that you’ve helped build ? do you feel like it’s a bit your baby ?
nshopik:
Definitely. Yeah little bit.
Me:
Do you use extensions ? if yes can you list them ?
nshopik:
Not much, nightly tester tools, gcontactsync, that’s it.
Me:
Anything you would like to add ?
nshopik:
I wish enterprises spend more resources on open source app like TB instead of throwing it out just after they find out it doesn’t support just one feature or has some imporant bug for them unfixed. They do have much more money and/or money to do this.
and/or manpower to do this
Me:
Thanks a lot for your time
nshopik:
Sure, always welcome