Mozilla will not be creating new versions of the Thunderbird mail client for Mac and PC as it seeks to focus attention in its 'ambitious' new projects.
In a letter to staff, posted by TechCrunch, the company has decided that "continued innovation on Thunderbird is not the best use of our resources given our ambitious organizational goals."
That means, it wants more hands on deck for the forthcoming launch of the Mozilla Firefox mobile OS, originally known as Boots to Gecko
The company says it is not 'stopping' Thunderbird per se, but will now focus only on continued security and stability for the 20m users across the world.
Community-driven innovation
In terms of new additions to the client? Well that buck has been passed to the community.
"Thunderbird is one of the very few truly free and open source multi-platform email applications available today and we want to defend these values," wrote Thunderbird MD Jb Piacentino.
"We're not "stopping" Thunderbird, but proposing we adapt the Thunderbird release and governance model in a way that allows both ongoing security and stability maintenance, as well as community-driven innovation and development for the product."
Piacentino says it is likely that members of the Thunderbird team will be moved onto other projects, including the company's more illustrious Firefox web browser and the forthcoming mobile OS.
Via: TechCrunch
