Thunderbird is GO: Mozilla prepares to jettison mail client

[tangor]

The Mozilla Foundation, which last year flagged its intention to push Thunderbird out of its nest, reckons it's identified possible new homes – including itself.

In a report provided to Mozilla by Simon Phipps, the Software Freedom Conservancy and The Document Foundation are named as possible hosts for the project. Phipps suggests Thunderbird could only remain under the Mozilla Foundation under an unspecified “new arrangement”.

The Mozilla Foundation has long been concerned that Thunderbird needed resources better spent on Firefox, and late last year made it clear it wanted the software to survive on its own.

[theregister.co.uk...]

I suspect that a few of us who use Firefox also use Thunderbird as an email client. It appears the Firefox folks want the Thunderbird folks to give up some resources (ie. get out of town).

[bill]

Read this story earlier, but wan't sure how much to make of it as I didn't see much about it reported elsewhere. There have been reports earlier that they wanted to drop ThinderBird, so this seems in line with that. However the client still has a fairly substantial user base, so it would be missed if it were to simply be dropped as a project.

[tangor]

I, too, would be greatly disappointed if TBird was lost. EVERY client I have has been migrated to Thunderbird since it came out ... and that's several hundred in my small group (and they in turn have urged others and their families to do the same so that is NOT a small number of folks!).

Reading the comments to the article above shows many would be unhappy. Also it appears that Tbird has a larger base in Germany (and probably the EU) than I knew about.

It's sad when you find something that "just works" might either get the ax, or be taken over by another who will be tempted to stamp their mark (usually for the worse) on the product.

[engine]

Lost might be too strong a word. If someone takes it over it might be better. If nobody takes it over it'll just go away. What alternatives are there for users?

[treeline]

On a windows desktop I use Outlook for work and Thunderbird for everything else. Are there any other good options for Windows? Thanks.