In an oddly worded Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation, it’s announced that the development of Mozilla Thunderbird (my mail client of choice) is coming to an end.
Much of Mozilla’s leadership — including that of the Thunderbird team — has come to the conclusion that on-going stability is the most important thing, and that continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts. (For more information about the path to this conclusion, see the “Background Information” section below.) As a result, the Thunderbird team has developed a plan that provides both stability for Thunderbird’s current state and allows the Thunderbird community to innovate if it chooses.
This is very sad to me. I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird for years now, on all three major OSs. On Ubuntu Linux it’s the default mail client (sorry, but Evolution is still stuck back in 2002), it’s the only (decent, IMHO) free mail client for Windows (Outlook is horrible and if you’re not working at a corporation or want something free it’s not there for you). I am ok with Apple’s Mail.app, but it’s not going to do it for everyone, and Thunderbird runs great under Mac OS.
Hopefully folks in the Thunderbird community will take up the mantle and continue to update Thunderbird in the future.