Mozilla decides Thunderbird is already what users are looking for, decides that stability will be the only focus moving forward

Some interesting developments lately in terms of Thunderbird. It seems as if Mozilla has decided that the email app has reached its peak. Well, sort of. You see, the folks over at Mozilla have recently asked a question. One that makes us wonder just how much development time and innovation will be going into future work on Thunderbird. The details are coming from the Lizard Wrangling blog where is notes that;

“Thunderbird provides an open-source, cross-platform email alternative for those of us who still use stand-alone email clients (and I am one).  It’s trust-worthy, it’s under your control, and it’s built to reflect the Mozilla mission. Once again we’ve been asking the question:  is Thunderbird a likely source of innovation and of leadership in today’s Internet life?  Or is Thunderbird already pretty much what its users want and mostly needs some on-going maintenance?”

And for good and bad, the Mozilla team seems to be leading to the side of stability. Further details note that “much” of Mozilla’s leadership team have decided that “on-going stability is the most important thing” and that the “continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority.”

Sounds pretty bad if you ask us. But then again, it does not look like Thunderbird is being killed off, just put on a back-burner of sorts. The future is going to go like this (at least for now) — Mozilla will continue to provide security updates by way of an Extended Support Release process. Furthermore, they are also going to maintain mechanisms for the Thunderbird community to organize for further development. That being said, those interested in helping can check out the Thunderbird development forums to get involved.

Via [Lizard Wrangling] and [TechCrunch]