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README.md

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+# Sunbird: My favourite calendar program
+
+I've been using Mozilla products as my calendar system for many years, but sadly
+their flagship calendar product, Sunbird, was discontinued in 2010.
+Sunbird was and is a really nice calendar solution because it has the following
+combination of features:
+
+- It's local-first (no network required).
+- It supports the iCalendar format and CalDAV protocol for syncing with other calendar systems.
+- It has a very nice user interface (what you'd expect from a large company like Mozilla).
+  - It supports mouse-driven drag-and-drop for moving events around.
+- It has barely any dependencies, so it can be easily installed on a wide variety of platforms.
+- It uses very little resources, given that it was designed to run on the average computer of 2004-2010.
+- It's open source, so it can theoretically be updated and ported to other platforms.
+- It runs on Linux, and doesn't require any web accounts (e.g. Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.).
+
+# History
+
+[October 1998: Sunbird begins life as 'Zulu'](https://web.archive.org/web/19991011010018/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
+- With the stated aim of supporting iCalendar (still one of its huge advantages).
+- "Zulu is the next-generation calendar client currently under development for Netscape Communicator."
+
+[December 2001: 'Zulu' is renamed 'Mozilla Calendar'](https://web.archive.org/web/20011211125739/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
+According to the webpage from the time, it still was not a 'released' product, and needed to be compiled by users.
+Stated aims at this point:
+- "The Mozilla Calendar project is meant to create an open source, standards based calendar solution."
+- "Presently the code only runs under Linux, with plans in the works to quickly convert the code to run under Windows and Mac. "
+At this point, the project states that the code for Mozilla Calendar was
+donated from *OEone Corporation*.  Whether this group were also involved with
+'Zulu' is unclear.  Perhaps they were.  Based on [a pixelated screenshot](https://web.archive.org/web/20011211125739/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/screenshot.html) of the
+calendar from the time, it looks like at that stage it ran as a server with a
+web interface, accessible via Firefox, or perhaps the entire calendar ran as a
+Firefox extension.
+
+[August 2002: 'Mozilla Calendar' adds Windows and Mac support](https://web.archive.org/web/20020802223115/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
+![Screenshot 1](https://web.archive.org/web/20020428144010if_/http://mozilla.org:80/projects/calendar/images/mozilla_calendar.jpg)
+![Screenshot 2](https://web.archive.org/web/20020822154815if_/http://mozilla.org:80/projects/calendar/images/mozilla_newevent.gif)
+
+At this point, the calendar is definitely a standalone application, and has a similar appearance to the final Sunbird product release.
+
+[February 2003: Calendar 'Skins' become available](https://web.archive.org/web/20030201103420/http://projectit.com/skypilot/)
+
+[April 2004: 'Mozilla Calendar' is renamed 'Sunbird'](https://web.archive.org/web/20040404190553/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html)
+
+"The Sunbird Project is a redesign of the Mozilla Calendar component. Our goal
+is to produce a cross platform standalone calendar application based on
+Mozilla's XUL user interface language. At the moment the "Sunbird" name is a
+project name. It is not official and may change in the future."
+
+"Our intended user is someone who uses Mozilla Firefox (or another browser) as
+his browser, Mozilla Thunderbird (or another mail client) as his mail client
+and wants a calendar application based on Mozilla."
+
+"In addition, by focusing solely on standalone calendar, we believe we can make
+some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the calendar application
+by removing components and chrome we don't need."
+
+"At the moment Sunbird is in an experimental stage. Although it is quite
+stable, we recommend it for testing purposes only."
+
+Later:
+
+"In addition, by focusing solely on standalone calendar, we believe we can make
+some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the calendar application
+by removing components and chrome we don't need."
+
+[A 2004 Review of Sunbird](https://web.archive.org/web/20041101091034/http://osdir.com/Article1558.phtml)
+
+[April 2006: First mention of 'Lightning'](https://web.archive.org/web/20060427181604/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/index.html)
+
+What would eventually come to replace Sunbird was a spinoff project called
+'Lightning', which essentially took Sunbird and made it into a Thunderbird
+extension.  The first mention I could find of it was in April 2006, when
+it started to appear below the Sunbird project on the Mozilla website.
+
+[2007: Lightning starts to be prioritised](https://web.archive.org/web/20070528183038/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/index.html)
+In a bold move, Mozilla start to position Lightning above Sunbird on their
+official website.  Though both projects are still in development under
+the umbrella 'Mozilla Calendar' project.
+
+[April 2010: Mozilla announce Sunbird's 'last version'](https://web.archive.org/web/20100404032000/http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/)
+"This is the last public Sunbird release by the Calendar Project.
+We recommend upgrading to Thunderbird 3 and Lightning 1.0 beta1."
+
+To me this is highly contentious reasoning, given that Sunbird and Thunderbird
+are very different products.  To someone who already has a favourite email
+client, they now have to choose between their email client and their calendar
+client: stay with Sunbird-style workflow and adopt Thunderbird, or stay with
+their email client and lose their Sunbird-style workflow by looking for a
+different calendar solution.
+
+[January 2014: Mozilla remove all mention of Sunbird from their website](https://web.archive.org/web/20140104071728/http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/projects/calendar/)
+Lightning is now the only calendar product mentioned on the Mozilla website,
+which integrates with Thunderbird.
+
+# Quality
+
+The reason Sunbird is so good is that it was in active development for 15 years
+or more, by whole teams of developers and designers.  This is a level or resources
+not typical of open source projects, and it shows in the quality of the product, which
+is still one of the best desktop calendars for Linux today.
+
+# Installation
+
+I've put together a `install.sh` script which can be used to install Sunbird on
+a Linux system.  It pulls the last stable version of Sunbird from the Mozilla
+archives, checks a SHA256 hash to verify the integrity of the download, and
+then extracts the files, installs the application, icons and desktop entry.
+
+Requirements: gtk2