Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client has yet to enjoy the same degree of success as the Firefox Web browser, which has become one of the most successful open source projects ever with over
400 million downloads.
Mozilla is aiming to improve Thunderbird’s fortunes with a new organization
that will spearhead development and grow the e-mail client’s developer
ecosystem. Thunderbird won’t be starting its new organization penniless, either.
Mozilla has stated that it will seed the new e-mail entity with $3 million in
funding.
“We will increase our investment and focus on our current e-mail client —
Thunderbird — and on innovations in the e-mail and communications areas,”
Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, wrote in a blog post. “We are
doing so by creating a new organization with this as its sole focus and
committing resources to this organization.”
To lead the new e-mail focus in the organization, Mozilla has hired David
Ascher, currently CTO and vice president of engineering of ActiveState, developer of the Mozilla Framework-based Komodo IDE.
Baker noted in her blog post that among the goals for the new e-mail
organization is for it to spark the same kind of excitement and energy level
and innovation in the e-mail communications space as Firefox has done in the
Web browsing space.
“And when we do, Internet life will get much, much better and much more
interesting,” Baker wrote.
The Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail project was originally known as Minotaur but renamed Thunderbird in 2003; at the same time
Phoenix was renamed Firefox.
The most recent branch of Thunderbird development is the 2.x series, which first appeared earlier this year. Thunderbird has also been chosen as the base
for the new version of Qualcomm’s once popular Eudora e-mail client.
