Thunderbird in Crisis?

Elektroschock writes "The two core developers of Thunderbird have left Mozilla. Scott McGregor made a brief statement: 'I wanted to let the Thunderbird community know that Friday October 12th will be my last day as an employee of the Mozilla Corporation.' Meanwhile, David Bienvenu blogged: 'Just wanted to let everyone know that my last day at The Mozilla Corporation will be Oct. 12. I intend to stay involved with Thunderbird... I've enjoyed working at Mozilla a lot, and I wish Mozilla Co and the new Mail Co all the best.' A few month ago Mozilla management considered abandoning their second product and setting up a special corporation just for the mail client. Scott was more or less supportive. David joined in. While Sunbird just released a new version no appropriate resources were dedicated to the missing component. And while Thunderbird became the most used Linux mail client it has been abandoned by Mozilla for 'popularity reasons'. Both messages from David and Scott do not sound as if the founders will play any role in the Thunderbird Mail Corporation. What happened to Mozilla? Is it a case of pauperization through donations?"

Comments

Its been that way for YEARS

[rtilghman]

I originally tried to switch to Thunderbird from Outlook a couple years back. Same problem... nothing imported properly, messages and contacts all over the place in bits and pieces, etc. Multiple bugs have already been reported but never solved.

The comments are that certain architectures are hard to read and import from. My comment to that is, well, if you plan on Thunderbird being any kind of success working import is the first step, so either fix it or die.

Thunderbird was a great idea, but for those with better working IMAP options (Outlook Express for example) it leaves a great deal to be desired. I think the primary audience is Linux/Unix folks.

rt