Mozilla could spin Thunderbird off as separate organization

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Mozilla, Open Source

Mozilla could spin Thunderbird off as separate organization

by Brad Linder Jul 26th 2007

Thunderbird could be ready to leave Mozilla's nest. Sorry. But Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker says Mozilla is thinking about setting up a separate organization to oversee Thunderbird, allowing Mozilla to focus primarily on the popular Firefox web browser.

Baker says "the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox, and the ecosystem around it." In other words, while Mozilla's proud of the work they've done on Firefox the corporation is treating Thunderbird like a bastard child and they're getting sick of looking at it. Okay, not so much sick of looking at it as feeling that it could thrive better in another environment.

Mozilla is seeking input from members of the open-source committee on what type of organization they would like to see set up:

A nonprofit organization like the Mozilla Foundation
A new Thunderbird organization that would still be part of the Mozilla Foundation and guided by its board
Thunderbird could be released as a community project with some support from a Mozilla founded company

[via PC World]

Tags: firefox, thunderbird

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Lisa Hoover said 3:06PM on 7-26-2007

I think this is a great idea, and long overdue. Thunderbird has a lot of potential to be a great mail client but it's needs some TLC. I hope Mozilla gets their act together and makes this happen sooner rather than later.

Fred Thompson said 4:47PM on 7-26-2007

The Eudora team has already migrated the project away from Qualcomm and they are working to combine it with Thunderbird. IMNSHO, Eudora's filtering and dense display are better than Firefox. I'm sure there are areas where Firefox is more capable than Eudora. It sure would be nice to have one project, not two forks.

Thomas said 9:42AM on 7-27-2007

For some reason, it seems like Eurdora is going to pick it up. Either way, I just don't want it to get ignored. It's got so much potential.

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