SeaMonkey 2 contributor interviews: Mnyromyr

It’s time for the third in a series of interviews with SeaMonkey 2.0 contributors, obviously nicknames around here can be somewhat cryptic – our mail/news owner shows that off pretty well and goes by “Mnyromyr” on IRC:
Who are you?
My real name is Karsten Düsterloh.
Since nobody without a German language background can pronounce that properly, I’m usually known as Mnyromyr, though. (Which noone pronounces correctly either – there’s true parity here! *g*).
I’m living in the outskirts of the Ruhr Area, Germany, where I was also born in the early ’70s. Technically speaking I’m a mathematician, but in reality I’m working as software developer at a small ISP. Occasionally, I write articles on Mozilla topics.
When time permits, I’m an active carom billiards player, albeit of limited success (average of about 3.0, for Those Who Know™). I’m also fan and collector of science fiction novels. Yes, real, printed *books*, thousands of them. 😉
How did you become a SeaMonkey contributor?
When I entered university in the early ’90s, the internet wasn’t that compelling. WAIS wasn’t any more interesting than your usual text adventure, and you were content getting a mail every other week. And beating up emacs to deal with newsgroups isn’t much fun either.
A while later, the chair in mathematics got shiny new Sun SPARC workstations, with Netscape 1.1 … Done, end of story. 😉
Well, actually, I followed the Netscape trail up until the end, this time on Windows (Trumpet Winsock, anyone?), but in parallel watched Mozilla’s early steps until I made it my primary browser with milestone M<some_two_digits>. Sadly, Mozilla mail part wasn’t usable until about Mozilla 0.6, hence Netscape 4.x had lots of time for pouting – .snm is pronounced c-r-a-s-h-i-n-g-_-h-e-l-l!
Mozilla became stable, but MailNews still stalled. Filed my first bug (96623) which got duped almost instantly. People were writing extensions to patch up the shortcomings, notably the Message ID Finder, so why can’t I? Thus, at the end of 2002, I published the first beta of Mnenhy to customize a mail’s header display.
When Mozilla began waffling about letting the suite die in favour of some boring browser-only thingy, I was *really* irked, so I took part in saving the lizard…
What notable contribution did you make to SeaMonkey 2.0?
The most *visible* one for sure is tabmail, the new-old tabbed MailNews user interface. Stuff like the preferences dialog backend or the SeaMonkey/Thunderbird source code disentanglement should be virtually invisible to users anyway, just as many patches and reviews …
How can users give something back to you?
You could send me postcards, especially if you’re not from Germany. The Mnenhy contact page has details. 😉
Why, in your eyes, should people use SeaMonkey 2.0?
Well, it’s the best SeaMonkey ever, of course!
Seriously, if you like to handle all your daily internet life – mail, news, RSS, browsing, IRC – in a smooth, integrated workflow with today’s technology, SeaMonkey 2.0 is for you!
Even more, if you’re a (web) developer, SeaMonkey comes with useful tools like a JavaScript debugger and DOM inspector already installed…
Not to mention that you don’t need to learn your whereabouts in a gazillion different programs, it’s all under the same hood.
And it’s free. And open. Customizable. Get involved! Now! *jingle* 😉
What next step do you see for SeaMonkey, and what would you like to happen in the Mozilla and SeaMonkey projects?
SeaMonkey’s main strength is its integrated nature, we should boost that even more. The upcoming collaboration with the KompoZer project is a good example.
Personally, I see MailNews as the key component here, the communication heart of future internet live. Here you stay in touch with family, friends, peers and collegues, leisure and business. Write mails, read news, chat, plan your schedule, browse the net.
In other words: We need a calendar (again). We need widespread mail encryption. We need MailNews bookmarks. We need instant messaging and other ways of communication as they come along.
All these aren’t bloaty killer features, most of the technical backend stuff is there already anyway, waiting to be exploited …