I read recently the Mozilla project is now reducing the resources they put into the Thunderbird email client and will in the future no longer have any fulltime developers dedicated to Thunderbird.
The core issues for me are:
1. There will be no fulltime developers actively developing Thunderbird.
2. There are no plans past 2013 for Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is a popular email client with over 20 million users. This is an example of where the Open Source model doesn’t work. If every Thunderbird user paid just one dollar, the income generated would probably close to exceed the direct income Mozilla generates in total, excluding the contribution from Google. The majority of income for Mozilla is payment from Google for having Google as the default search engine for Firefox.
Since users don’t generally directly contribute financially to the project they are not the client. The client in this case for Mozilla is mostly Google.
For users there is no rush to make a decision. I expect Mozilla Thunderbird will enter an extended period of maintenance which for many people may be sufficient. For example many people still use Outlook Express. Development for Outlook Express stopped around 2005-2006 and Outlook Express users and generally very happy with their software.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 if you require computer support
in the Doncaster, Templestowe, Eltham and surrounding areas.
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