Thunderbird May Be Set Free

I was a bit disappointed to read that the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation is seriously considering giving Thunderbird the chop and setting it free from the constraints and support of the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation.

Whilst Thunderbird has been playing second fiddle to Firefox, I think it’s equally as important and really needs the backing of an established name to continue to drive it forward. I can understand Mozilla’s desire to focus on the web, and increase it’s push towards overcoming the IE dominance, but what about the dominance of Outlook and the lack of usable, truly cross-platform email clients?

I think if Thunderbird does get set free from the greater Mozilla organisation, they need to be careful at how they do it. At the moment it’s getting financial backing from Mozilla. By severing all ties, it’ll lose that backing and whilst development hasn’t been the quickest, I think it’ll slow quite considerably.

On a related note, what will happen to Penelope (the Qualcomm contributed Eudora code) that is being developed, “not to compete with Thunderbird, but rather to complement it“?