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Mozilla May Separate Itself From Thunderbird Email Client (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A company-wide memo distributed throughout the Mozilla Foundation by chairperson Mitchell Baker argues that the organization should disentangle itself from the Thunderbird email client in order to focus on Firefox. She said, "Today Thunderbird developers spend much of their time responding to changes made in core Mozilla systems and technologies. At the same time, build, Firefox, and platform engineers continue to pay a tax to support Thunderbird." Both projects are wasting time helping each other, and those demands are only going to get worse. She says many within Mozilla want to see it support community-managed projects without doing the bulk of the work on it, and perhaps Thunderbird could be one of those projects. Baker stresses that no decisions have been made yet — they're starting the conversation early to keep the community involved in what happens to Thunderbird.
Why should Mozilla keep an Open Source email client alive?
After all, everyone loves Outlook and Windows Mail and Apple Mail, and those corporations know what's best for us.
I am rather amazed that in a post-Snowden world, everyone is just totally fine with doing away with Thunderbird -- arguably one of the most important open source email systems out there. However I do understand why some large companies, such as Google (gmail) and Microsoft (outlook), might want to get rid of the competition. By the way, who is funding Mozilla these days?
You have no idea what you are talking about, right? You make it sound like Thunderbird is part of Firefox. It's not. It's a stand-alone application. Try to learn what you are using.
Am I the only person left who actually LIKES and used Thunderbird?
Enough of the "just use webmail" crap. I do in an emergency, but on established computers I live on regularly, you can't beat the better power, speed and versatility of a native email application running locally. I get far more-features in Thunderbird than my email provider's lightweight and simple web interface.
Plus Thunderbird is cross-platform and available on my variety on mixed-OS computers, giving me a consistent local-app email experience across them all.
But I suppose a good portion of the email-app-haters are the same ones as email-haters who would rather use IM, SMS and Facebook messaging rather than proper email. Get off my lawn... some of us actually use the internet for work too, not just play.