The community is standing behind Thunderbird
Thunderbird is an absolutely core tool used by 20 million people to manage one of the most important areas of their internet life: their email.
When Mozilla recently announced some big changes to our Thunderbird strategy (link: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/) we knew that there would be an uproar. We knew that it would be interpreted by many as Thunderbird’s death knell.
It gives us extreme pleasure to provide proof that the doom-sayers are wrong.
As the storm swirled around us last week, as we were alternately pilloried and praised in the media, as our long-standing loyal contributors questioned our decision and their future, we worried. And then a little thread started on the “tb-planning” mailing list (the forum where we discuss Thunderbird development plans). Some of our most loyal and long-standing contributors started talking about how the community might take on a development project (nicknamed “papercuts”) that we’ve long wanted to do. How they might organize around that project. How they might engage new contributors around that project.
At last count, the original thread had 48 posts and had spawned other threads where people – Thunderbird community contributors – were figuring out the action plan. There were commitments, ideas and a bubbly sense of enthusiasm and creativity.
Something all the doom-sayers seem to have forgotten is that Thunderbird is an open source project. And that means that Thunderbird is only as good as it’s community. Mozilla is not abandoning Thunderbird. We’re going to continue releasing security updates and providing the infrastructure for Thunderbird development, QA, support and documentation. But it’s the Thunderbird community who are going to drive improvements and innovation. Thunderbird has a very bright future.
Do you believe in Thunderbird? Do you love Thunderbird? Then contribute to Thunderbird. Check out the Up For Grabs page to see the available projects. Click on this link to join Support or on this link to join Documentation. Join our community.
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