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Thunderbird to Leave Mozilla Foundation

Posted by Zonk on from the fewer-fowl-feather-firefox's-flanks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Mozilla Thunderbird is to move to a 'new separate organizational setting' as the Mozilla Foundation focuses more and more on Mozilla Firefox. Citing a blog post by Chief Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker, MozillaZine outlines the three possibilities for Thunderbird that are being considered: 'one is to create a entirely new non-profit, which would offer maximum independence for Thunderbird but is organisationally complex. A second option is to create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird, which would keep the Mozilla Foundation involved but may mean that Thunderbird continues to be neglected in favour of Firefox. A final option is to recast Thunderbird as community project, similar to SeaMonkey, and set up a small independent services and consulting company to continue development. However, there are concerns over how the Thunderbird product, project and company would interact'. Lead Thunderbird developer Scott MacGregor favours the third option."

5 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. I submitted this story yesterday... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Before it even hit MozillaZine... and what do I get? Nothing.

  2. Re:Poor thunderbird by keithjr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the enterprise world, it's not uncommon for companies to not use Outlook but still rely on an Exchange infrastructure. Thunderbird as a standalone mail client is fine, but if it wants to compete it's going to have to integrate much better with robust calendar and resource scheduling programs. Lightning or Sunbird betas aren't going to cut it.

  3. What is the Foundation not providing? by kimba · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is disappointing news, and begs the question why the Mozilla Foundation can't provide the needed resources to Thunderbird?

    Given the Mozilla Foundation HAS a substantial amount of money, presumably spinning Thunderbird out into a separate entity will mean Thunderbird will have even less money than it has today because it can not be cross-subsidised by Firefox's search revenues. Spinning Thunderbird out, which will cost it more and earn it less, doesn't sound like a recipe for success if your problem is lack of resources.

  4. Exactly what I was thinking. by pavon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whatever little Mozilla Foundation is providing to Thunderbird has to be better than nothing, which is what they would be getting from them if they went their own way. Unless the foundation is hindering development in someway, I really don't see the point of spinning off.

  5. Re:Poor thunderbird by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I find it fast and a much better program than Outlook. Now if you compare it to Outlook plus Exchange then it really isn't in the same league. To me that is the problem.

    I think you're right-- that's the problem. How to solve that problem, I don't know, but that is most likely the reason why Thunderbird doesn't have a larger user base.

    I think most people who use e-mail fall into a couple groups.

    • The first is the business power user, for whom nothing matches Outlook+Exchange+Blackberry/WindowMobile. This is a huge market
    • The second group would be very casual users, for whom being able to read their e-mail is sufficient. They'll just use whatever comes on their computer, or else webmail. They really don't care as long as they can send and receive e-mail. This is a huge market.
    • For the sake of the discussion, I'll lump everyone else into a third group, and those are people with particular preferences or specialized needs. These people use the e-mail client they choose or else the e-mail client they need to. This group probably goes to Thunderbird pretty often, but there are still people using things like Pine, or some totally random client.

    The only real group that Thunderbird could go after would be the business users. However, in order to do that, you need to be able to connect to Exchange and do calendars, notes, task lists, and Exchange contact lists. Of course, you could also replace Exchange with something else, but that something else would have to have the same sorts of features, and Thunderbird would still have to connect to it.

    Contrary to what many geeks think, Exchange/Outlook is very helpful for a lot of businesses. Connecting tasks, calendars, e-mail, and contacts all together, and making that available through client software, on the web, and on mobile devices has turned out to be the big-business killer app.