Thunderbird will be developed by Mozilla`s subsidiary company

24th September 2007

Mozilla destined the further fate of the popular e-mail client Thunderbird. Remember, that in late June in Mitchell Baker`s blog (the head of Mozilla) information appeared, that the company is very likely to focus on the development of Firefox only. Mitchell Baker suggested three possible ways of Thunderbird`s development: creating a new non-profit organization, which will only take up the mail client; creating a branch Foundation also to focus only on Thunderbird; and leaving the program the way it is in the form of a public project.
Then users began writing negative comments addressed to Mozilla and electronic media burst out with the headlines, claiming that Mozilla has completely abandoned Thunderbird. As a result, both proved wrong. The organization chose the way, leaving any side quite satisfied: the other day Mozilla officially announced the creation of the new structure, under the rule of Mozilla, which will fully concentrate on working on Thunderbird.
Mozilla provided its subsidiary company with $ 3 million As noted in the official report, the decision was taken only after "active public discussion".
Meanwhile, the new company still has not a name and Mitchell Baker wrote in her blog, that she gave her the code name MailCo for the time being. Mozilla`s decision clearly will only bring benefit the organization, giving an opportunity to perform effective parallel development of Firefox and Thunderbird. Finally, we`d like to point out that this announcement puts an end to rumors about Mozilla`s desire to abandon Thunderbird due to the orders of Google, which, being a sponsor of Mozilla, “wants” to eliminate a competitor of its own mail service GMail.