BigBlueHat

Mitchell Baker, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, has announced Mozilla’s plans for funding and promoting the Mozilla Thunderbird and other Internet communications initiatives.

The Mozilla Foundation will be creating a separate organization to run, fund, and market the new communication related products. As avid Thunderbird users, we’re excited about the news. Especially in the wake of other news this week.

For the future, we would still enjoy seeing increased focus given to the Mozilla Platform. For now, though, we’re excited about the new “MailCo” being formed by Mozilla, and look forward to wonderful things for Thunderbird users everywhere.

Brad and I are heavy Thunderbird users. It’s been my exclusive e-mail client for home and business since it was originally spun out from the Mozilla Suite as a standalone product. All this time I’ve been waiting for the day when Thunderbird would take to the skies.

Late last month wheels began moving at Mozilla to get Thunderbird ready for that takeoff. Three options were put on the table. All of them pertained to giving Thunderbird the love it’s been in need of both from Mozilla leadership and from the open source community.

Throwing in our Hat

While we’re an incredibly small player by comparison to those who have contributed code and funds to the Thunderbird project, we do what we can by promoting Thunderbird to all of our clients, friends, and family–many of whom have eagerly switched to Thunderbird from Outlook and various webmail clients.

What I’d like to contribute now are a few ideas. As Thunderbird takes off, I’d like to contribute more tangible items. But for now, some thoughts. (more…)