Mozilla may separate from Thunderbird, its stand-alone e-mail client, the company's CEO has disclosed. In a posting to her blog Wednesday, CEO Mitchell Baker said that Mozilla's first priority is, and will continue to be, its open-source browser, Firefox. "As a result, Mozilla doesn't focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don't expect this to change in the foreseeable future," said Baker.
Thunderbird's community, which includes a large number of unpaid programmers, should be cut loose "to determine its own destiny," she said. The e-mail app, which was just updated to version 2.0.0.5 last week, is Mozilla's answer to Microsoft Outlook and Entourage, and other stand-alone e-mailers such as Mail, which is bundled with Mac OS X. Like Firefox, it's free to download, and comes in editions for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
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News source: PCWorld
Thunderbird's community, which includes a large number of unpaid programmers, should be cut loose "to determine its own destiny," she said. The e-mail app, which was just updated to version 2.0.0.5 last week, is Mozilla's answer to Microsoft Outlook and Entourage, and other stand-alone e-mailers such as Mail, which is bundled with Mac OS X. Like Firefox, it's free to download, and comes in editions for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
View: The full story News source: PCWorld
I sometimes use FireFox.
I think however that the programmers (unpaid) should get some payment of some kind.
It's gone from small group to a company, that can't be good news.
True, but when you can't afford to buy Microsoft Office, Thunderbird is the next best thing. I'm using it myself, but not for long, as I'm gonna be getting a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 soon. My mum works for the NHS, and now, if you work for the NHS, you can get Office for free! You just have to pay for shipping and handling, which wierdly is £18. Still very good, though. Getting a £400 piece of software for less than 1/20th of the price.
This news about the possible spin-off of Thunderbird is troubling, because I've grown to really enjoy working with it. I switched from using Outlook and have not missed that bloatware one bit.
I hope Mozilla's view changes.
Radish™
I hope Mozilla's view changes.
Radish™
I assume you use TB for personal use?
Shame to see it go, if it does, because it's a great program.
They need to work on the other seperated-but-improved components of the Mozilla suite like the calendar and compozer programs!
Last edited by Angel Blue01 on 28 Jul 2007 - 00:27
I like firefox for all the add-on you can use, but now it's beginning to be slower then IE7 and that's not a good point. Should get back to nothing include and download all add-on you want like in the beginning, I liked when I was launching Firefox, it was right now launch and used less then 10megs of ram.
As for tbird vs outlook, I prefer outlook for 2 main reason: sync with my ppc and can use webmail based (gmail, hotmail and stuff like that, not pop email). I know there is program to be able to get email from hotmail to tbird, but it's simply taking all email from folder you asked and transfer via pop mail, not the samething as seeing all folder right away. I must admit I found outlook slow though. I don't remember for tbird in the other hands.
Leaving Tbird, might not be the best thing but I do prefer they concentrate on firefox, if they can make it lighter like it was back in the beginning and fix those memory leak problem.
Getting Gmail in your mail client is via POP3.
I use Thunderbird and home and Outlook at work. Outlook is great at work because I use the reminders, calendar, et al it provides. Home I don't use these features as much, so Thunderbird is perfect for just general mail access.
On the other hand, I tried Windows Live Mail and was very, very close to switching.
Even if they do drop it, sounds like it'll still be out there to be built upon and downloaded, just not under the watchful eye of Mozilla.
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