Thunderbird’s New Home

January 28, 2020 Philipp Kewisch 114 responses

As of today, the Thunderbird project will be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, MZLA Technologies Corporation. This move has been in the works for a while as Thunderbird has grown in donations, staff, and aspirations. This will not impact Thunderbird’s day-to-day activities or mission: Thunderbird will still remain free and open source, with the same release schedule and people driving the project.

There was a time when Thunderbird’s future was uncertain, and it was unclear what was going to happen to the project after it was decided Mozilla Corporation would no longer support it. But in recent years donations from Thunderbird users have allowed the project to grow and flourish organically within the Mozilla Foundation. Now, to ensure future operational success, following months of planning, we are forging a new path forward. Moving to MZLA Technologies Corporation will not only allow the Thunderbird project more flexibility and agility, but will also allow us to explore offering our users products and services that were not possible under the Mozilla Foundation. The move will allow the project to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations, which in turn can be used to cover the costs of new products and services.

Thunderbird’s focus isn’t going to change. We remain committed to creating amazing, open source technology focused on open standards, user privacy, and productive communication. The Thunderbird Council continues to steward the project, and the team guiding Thunderbird’s development remains the same.

Ultimately, this move to MZLA Technologies Corporation allows the Thunderbird project to hire more easily, act more swiftly, and pursue ideas that were previously not possible. More information about the future direction of Thunderbird will be shared in the coming months.

Update: A few of you have asked how to make a contribution to Thunderbird under the new corporation, especially when using the monthly option. Please check out our updated site at give.thunderbird.net!

114 responses

Valentin wrote on January 28, 2020 at 18:12

I wish you good luck with the project. I am a long time Thunderbird user and also a donor to Mozilla Foundation. I wish to see a mobile app in the near future.

All the best!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:32

Mobile has been a much requested feature. It is also an entirely new product, but we have this on our radar to see how and when it would fit in. Thank you!

Bersama wrote on January 29, 2020 at 12:40

I’d be happy if you cooperate and work out sync with an existing app, such as FairEmail

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:15

This sounds like a great idea for the meanwhile, thank you for the feedback!

Iop wrote on February 1, 2020 at 16:58

Especially tags sync to FairEmail would make a great improvement!

Daniel Gray wrote on February 1, 2020 at 17:16

I’d rather see JMAP support first, before even attempting a mobile client. JMAP makes mail clients on mobile significantly better.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322991

K9 has been at work on it:

https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3272

Kent James wrote on January 28, 2020 at 19:23

Congratulations on making an important transition, that will hopefully allow you to really hire staff as well as add additional sources of income.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:31

Thank you so much Kent, your comment means a lot to me. We’re super excited about this transition, it does open the path to new possibilities in receiving income.

Mike Augenblick wrote on January 28, 2020 at 19:31

Excellent . I have been using Thunderbird in lieu of Outlook & now can continue…

Croydon wrote on January 28, 2020 at 19:39

Is there a place I can read more about MZLA Technologies Corporation?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:28

This is likely the first piece of information about MZLA you’ll see. Let us know if you have specific questions we can help answer.

Bersama wrote on January 29, 2020 at 12:44

Well, is MZLA an offspring of Mozilla foundation, or is it an investor who bought Thunderbird?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:11

MZLA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. There are no investors involved!

Martin Dougiamas wrote on January 28, 2020 at 20:14

Thanks for the clear explanation and noble goals, brother

Just make sure no thin wedge edges get in

Pete Compton wrote on January 28, 2020 at 20:27

Sounds great, and I wish you much success on T’bird’s new path.

However, meanwhile, PayPal sent notice today Mozilla Foundation canceled my automatic monthly donation to Thunderbird. I would like to continue to support your team on a monthly basis. How do I do this from this point on?

Also meanwhile: Thank you and your team for continuing to develop and support what IMHO is the best email/chat/RSS client out there.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:27

Hi Pete, thank you for renewing your vow to support Thunderbird! You should be getting a separate email on how to continue to give to Thunderbird with all necessary instructions. Let us know if something is unclear or you are not getting that email.

Rolf Gloor wrote on January 29, 2020 at 17:56

Hi Philipp
Congratulations to you and your team.
Looking forward to the new “steam” for the project.

I usually do some annual donations to several projects (Thunderbird, KDE, TDF/LO, etc.) and was just about doing those for 2020. But using the donation button on thunderbird.net gives an error.
Are there any new banking / payment informations?
Is there a place where we can find this information?

Thanks again for the great work.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 21:58

Thank you so much! I’ll get in touch with you regarding the error, hope we can get to the root of the issue.

John wrote on January 28, 2020 at 21:09

What kind of services? A Mozilla operated email provider might be nice!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:34

We don’t have any new services to announce just right now, but the new corporation will unlock new opportunities that were not possible before. An email provider is one of the more commonly requested features!

Daniel Gray wrote on February 1, 2020 at 17:18

> An email provider is one of the more commonly requested features!

Is it really necessary? There are plenty of good email providers out there.

What there isn’t is, plenty of email clients. It would be *far* better for Thunderbird to spend those resources on Thunderbird than stretch themselves too thin trying to do too much.

Peter Brown wrote on January 28, 2020 at 21:29

Please explain what activities Thunderbird plans to undertake that are not compatible with a 501 (c)(3) status. I have regularly contributed and will continue to do so if I approve of these activities.

Will Owen wrote on January 28, 2020 at 21:48

While I have no intention of stopping my small monthly donation, I do wish there were a clear way to address the limitations and shortcomings of Thunderbird on my iMac. The fact that so many files in so many of my daily inbox messages have to be cleared manually, instead of simply opening as they do in the browser, adds as much as an extra 30-40 minutes of wasted time every day, but there is no obvious way for me to ask for either a reason or a possible workaround.

FWIW, I’m currently running OS X El Capitan 10:11:6, though I should probably update that. However, OS updates have never made my use of Thunderbird any easier.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:23

We’d love to hear more about your use cases. I’m not quite sure I understand what you’d like to have cleared automatically or opened in the browser. If you have a feature request you can check bugzilla.mozilla.org, or if you think it might be solveable via support please check support.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird.

Mauro wrote on January 29, 2020 at 10:36

Good luck with the transition. I’m a long time TB user. Hopefully this year we will be able to see our beloved software evolving to some modern UX/UI. Although TB has been and is my daily driver since years, it really needs a redesign, honestly. To a better future!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 11:35

Thanks for the feedback Mauro! Alex on our team is looking into some improvements and tweaks we can do to make Thunderbird more modern.

Steve Yates wrote on January 28, 2020 at 21:50

Good news but I do hope the future doesn’t involve any need to introduce ads.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:22

Introducing ads doesn’t sound like something our users would enjoy, so I am not anticipating this would be the case. We’d like to be able to add services or features that provide a benefit and align with our values. Thanks for bringing it up!

Rith Antony wrote on January 29, 2020 at 00:36

My first reaction too, as soon as I saw the word “Corporation”. no doubt, my view is skewed.

Evan wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:19

Great news! I hope this means support for Microsoft Office 365 MFA (Modern Auth) will become a priority. I’m dying for a good Linux email client that will work on Microsoft.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:40

This change won’t specifically increase the priority of the MFA feature, but this is an area we are monitoring. Supporting MFA for enterprise installs is something that may require changes from Microsoft and we’ll see if we can follow up with our end of it soon after. Thanks for the feedback!

Robed D Jones wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:28

When thunderbird for android is coming ***

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:36

This is indeed a more common request, at the same time we need to make sure to focus our efforts. It is an intriguing idea though, the more we grow the more likely this would be possible.

James Springer wrote on January 29, 2020 at 12:47

I long for the day that I can use T’bird on my Android phone.

Asai Vanson wrote on January 28, 2020 at 23:59

Write access to LDAP, FTW!

Melchior Blausand wrote on January 30, 2020 at 03:09

Native CalDAV / CardDAV FTW!
Mozilla Sync for Thunderbird config FTW!
WebDAV for file transfer FTW!
Philipp FTW!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 30, 2020 at 09:14

Thank you Melchior, these are some good suggestions!

Râu Cao wrote on January 30, 2020 at 23:34

Yes, native CalDAV and CardDAV would be fantastic!

Oumarou HEBIE wrote on January 29, 2020 at 00:17

I hope this will maintain the core values of Thunderbird. I have been using it long time before knowing practically Outlook in business context. Thunderbird is the first client e-mail I used in my life. I had no mean at this time to contribute. Since I got a little regular revenue I could not avoid contributing to this project. My little contribution is not important and it can do nothing important and I know that. For me it is just an encouragement so that you know that your great work and values are recognized in the remote areas of this mercantile world. This encouragement will continue. Please ! Just keep the core values of the project.
Oumarou from Dakar, Senegal – West Africa.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 00:39

Thank you for your kind words Oumarou. You mention your contribution is not important, but I think quite the contrary is true. Every little donation plays a part in making Thunderbird a success, and we couldn’t do it without you. This transition does not include making any changes to our core values, we feel they are vital to keeping the internet open and accessible to all and would like to play our part to ensure this remains.

Marco Zehe wrote on January 29, 2020 at 02:41

Wow, congratulations! Exciting times ahead! 🙂

bhrich902 wrote on January 29, 2020 at 03:29

A fan of Thunderbird here. Unfortunately, I use Evolution at the moment because it works great with my work’s Exchange server by using the evolution-ews add-on. However, if Thunderbird were to use this function natively or via add-on, I would switch to it immediately. I really hope this happens at some point, as I like the feel of Thunderbird over Evolution overall. Thank you.

P.s., I know Thunderbird relies on the OWL add-on for Exchange, just not big on third party add-ons.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:29

Exchange support is incredibly hard to get right over different enterprise servers, but it is definitely a much requested feature. We’d like to focus on open standards but want to make room for developers that want to fill the gap.

Neffscape wrote on January 29, 2020 at 17:28

I’m using Thunderbird and Exchange using DAVmail server running in background. It works like a charm! http://davmail.sourceforge.net/

Ada Longenecker wrote on January 29, 2020 at 04:54

Hi,
With the last several updates from Thunderbird, some of my folders are missing, which is rather disconcerting.
Is there something I can do to avoid that?
Thanks.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:25

I’m sorry this is happening! I haven’t heard of similar issues, so I’m hoping they are just hidden in some way. Can you check out support.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/ for help? There is an area to ask questions as well where our community may be able to help you.

Andrew Tipton wrote on January 29, 2020 at 05:06

I have used THUNDERBIRD for 20 years hanging on in the hope that somehow it would be able to give/receive calendar entries from ALL providers and that a phone app [ modified greatly I realize ] could one day materialize — see some combo of FairEmail and Spike and vCita . . . yes consider collaborative documentation and CRM along the lines of WordPress but more integrated. .. And you’ll be able to ask a reasonable price for the NEXT 20 years … . Be bold !

Because in every other way it has been a cantankerous but complete Home for communications WAY BEFORE its time even if its interface is way behind. It has obviously been held together by great affection for the open source concept.

I contribute to Mozilla Foundation sporadically but I see no info on how to now contribute to the new endeavor. . . please advise

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:24

Thank you for being such a long time supporter of Thunderbird. Mobile is definitely an interesting space! If you’d like to contribute to Thunderbird please check out give.thunderbird.net. If you are up for it, a monthly contribution would help us most!

Hexydes wrote on January 29, 2020 at 06:13

Congrats, sounds like a good move. I know there are a lot of requests for a mobile app (and that would be good), but I’d actually be interested in seeing a hosted option for mail, that focuses on privacy and encrypted communication. Something similar to Protonmail, but run by Thunderbird/MZLA. You could optionally open-source any software you develop to run the service, but hosting your own email is notoriously frustrating for most people, so I think the hosted option is important. The nice part about this is that you can continue a focus on privacy and security that runs with the mission of Mozilla/Firefox, but also create a revenue stream (some free tier of service, with paid options for additional storage, etc) to help continue to support and grow the service/project.

Good luck with your new venture!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:20

This is one of the more common requests, thanks for the feedback. It does seem like a natural fit and our new home would make this a lot easier.

Hexydes wrote on January 29, 2020 at 16:34

Honestly, it seems like a pretty decent option for an ethical path to monetization. I’d be more than happy to pay a few bucks a month for this type of service (and maybe like $5 for the mobile app as well, or perhaps that just comes as a perk of continuing service?).

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:04

Thank you so much for offering your support! Our goal is indeed to increase our growth while retaining our values and benefiting the user. You can set up a regular donation at https://give.thunderbird.net/ . A mobile app is not on the horizon, though thank you for the feedback!

Ade Malsasa Akbar wrote on January 29, 2020 at 09:55

I wish you luck and success. I am a Thunderbird user as well.

Steve YATES wrote on January 29, 2020 at 10:31

Have used MozBackup for both backing up and moving Thunderbird to a different machine (Windows) for a long time now but it is no longer supported. It would be great to have a new solution.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 11:38

Making migrations easy would be great! While it may not be for everyone, migrating a Thunderbird profile to a new computer is really just a matter of copying the profile folder to the right place on the new machine: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

Arthur K wrote on January 29, 2020 at 15:35

In response to “migrating a Thunderbird profile to a new computer is really just a matter of copying the profile folder to the right place on the new machine”: How hard is it to build in a backup/restore feature to TB that backs up the current profile to a .ZIP file to, say, the desktop which can then be copied to the desktop of a new machine / install and, using the same backup/restore feature, restore the profile to the new machine? I bet people would pay money for that simplicity.

I think you guys lose a *lot* of users when they have to move off an EOL version of Windows (i.e., Windows 7 > Windows 10 now that Windows 10 is EOL) and they don’t know or aren’t tech savvy enough to know how to migrate a profile manually. I think there’s financial opportunity there. I’d kick in $ for that if it benefits the community at large.

I’m a 29+ year IT Admin and regular Bugzilla contributor (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/user_profile?user_id=393183) and have recently taken on some work with Wayne M to improve TB. But me me, this is not a problem and I regularly do profile migrations for friends and family members who’ve bought new machines and wanted to keep all their Firefox or TB data. Just sayin’.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:08

This is an important comment, I agree it would be great to have a simple way to migrate profiles across computers. This is actually something that could benefit Firefox as well, so ideally we could get someone from the Firefox team excited about this and then benefit from it for Thunderbird as well. There probably is a fair amount of effort involved to get it right, but it is certainly not impossible.

Boersenfeger wrote on January 29, 2020 at 16:30

In addition:
Hi Steve!
MozBackUp is out of Order since 2012, so nearly 8 Years..
Have a look at the homepage of the developer Pavel Cvrcek:
http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
And read carefully this:
“MozBackup is not being developed anymore. There are known issues and there is no time on my side to fix all issues and develop new features. Use MozBackup only on your risk. Thanks for understanding. Source code is available on GitHub.”

KD Johnson wrote on January 29, 2020 at 12:05

It is good to hear that development will continue and is in good hands.
I am, unfortunately, having difficulty in transferring my monthly donation by PayPal – this has now failed three times. Information oin the website still suggests that donations go to the Mozilla Foundation, is the new donation mechanism for MZLA technologies not working yet?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:17

We are having some issues with our monthly gifts at the moment, please do check back soon. https://give.thunderbird.net should mention it goes to MZLA.

Peter Panski wrote on January 29, 2020 at 12:52

Please stay away form trackers, telemetry, paid ads, sponsored messages etc. Thank you!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:11

I agree: we have no intentions to turn Thunderbird into something that would collect user data for profit, or interrupt the user like sponsored messages would.

Stephen Sklarow wrote on January 29, 2020 at 14:46

I am getting fed up with my emails being relegated to the Junk folder. Any filter I create, be it from any “header” doesn’t continue to work. There is no relevant tech support to fix this problem which started over a year ago. I would like to go back to outlook express if it were available. I don’t want any more features. Leave it the way it is and fix the problems it has.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:09

Hi Stephen, I’m sorry you are having issues with Thunderbird. I’m guessing you’ve checked https://support.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/ to no avail. Did you know it is also possible to ask support questions there?

Kesavan Muthuvel wrote on January 29, 2020 at 15:18

Using Thunderbird for more than a decade. Life without Thunderbird it’s not easy for me. Thank you team for the awesome open source project. This is a right move in right time. Good luck on our upcoming successes.

David Hoerl wrote on January 29, 2020 at 16:15

Dear Philipp Kewisch,

I’d very much like to briefly chat with you about mobile. Please email me when you have the time (I cannot for the life of me find any other way to contact you except here.)

Previous Eudora user, Thunderbird user for geez 10+ years.

David

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:06

Happy to get in touch, thank you for your commitment to Thunderbird!

Monica Graeme wrote on January 29, 2020 at 17:29

Hmm, I’m not sure about this move – offering “more services and products” sounds a bit like going down the route of Google and Facebook. I’ve used Thunderbird for about the last 12 years and don’t want to use another provider, but for me each update is making it more complicated and with the latest update I’ve lost a lot of e-mails because if I delete an e-mail from one folder it is deleted from ALL of the folders. I know some individuals and those with businesses may need the extras but some of us just want a basic e-mail service.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 22:01

I can assure you we won’t be giving up on our values. Thunderbird will continue to be free and open source. This change allows us to use our resources better and operate with more freedom, allowing us to focus on improving Thunderbird for our users. Any additional services we might offer should aim to benefit the user, not spy on them.

Rolf Gloor wrote on January 29, 2020 at 18:09

Congratulations and all the best to the TB Team.

I am a heavy user of TB since almost the beginning and also have deployed TB to many friends systems and also within some small companies / businesses.

Now I hope, that with this new “setup”, MZLA can now really complete the functional foundation of the client. (Before any cosmetic updates.)

Most important points on my “wish list” are:

1.) MUST: CardDAV AddressBook
Include a CardDAV compatible AddressBook. Like CardBook, but not as an add-on, but fully integrated with a proper sync.
(If you want to write an email, you need email-addresses, hence a address book, and you don’t want to maintain, several of those.)

2.) IMPORTANT: Tasks & Memos/Notes
In order to have a full PIM client, improved features for Tasks as well as Memos/Notes.
Adding tags to both of them, eventually folders and tags, and much better sort and filter capabilities. (Similar to the sort and filter functions in the email section.)

=> It would be nice to have a fully functional “Outlook” (PIM) replacement, running on several platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac).

There is still a large user base, that does want a local client, capable of managing several email inboxes / accounts from several providers, as well as tasks and memos/notes, all in one location.

Again, my very best wishes to the TB team.
Looking forward to the new momentum.

Best regards from Switzerland,
Rolf

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 21:55

Hi Rolf, these are indeed features we care about a lot. Thank you for the feedback!

ALLYN Clausen wrote on January 29, 2020 at 18:36

Great news!! long-time user thanks

Muhammad Younas Awan wrote on January 29, 2020 at 19:33

This means we can now have multilne messages list like outlook has?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 21:54

The move itself does not automatically get you that feature, but the more people give to Thunderbird the more possibilities we will have to add new features. Maybe check out https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/ 🙂

Deb Carleln wrote on January 29, 2020 at 19:46

So happy to hear what sounds like a new commitment to Thunderbird. I migrated to it years ago and until 68.4.1 this week have been so happy. For the Mac it’s been a bit wobbly, and many questions to the forum are streaming in with the newest update. I hope that Mozilla will continue to and perhaps even more closely keep ahead of our problems. Many wishes for success with the new arrangement.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 21:53

We have the one or other developer on Mac so we hope we are ironing out the issues quickly. Thank you for being a Thunderbird supporter!

Dean Beedell wrote on January 29, 2020 at 19:48

I have been slowly mothballing Thunderbird after the slow but inevitable move away from UXP. When Firefox did the same I migrated to Palemoon. Since then my updates for TB have been cancelled and I run cautiously on an old version of 52.4 with no plans to upgrade but eventually to migrate to a TB user fork – Interlink, which is still based on UXP. If the new product was to retain UXP compatibility in the future then I might reconsider my decision and remain with TB and perhaps donate if I am going to stay.

I have been a TB user for many years now and devoted Firefox user but Mozilla seems to have lost its way and my allegiance was swapped to a group that more aligned with my values, the Palemoon team.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 21:51

For security reasons we would definitely not recommend staying on an unsupported version of Thunderbird. I understand that you don’t agree with the direction, but would urge you to take precautions to mitigate the security issues. Thanks for your feedback!

Tarraccas Obremski wrote on January 29, 2020 at 20:11

As a longtime user, I’m glad Thunderbird continues to enjoy ongoing updates and development and am happy to pitch in towards that effort into the future.

One of the reasons I continue to use Thunderbird is its extensibility and that if I happen to want a particular feature not already baked in it can be developed.

I echo others comments I read here regarding a mobile app (I currently use K-9 Mail) and centralized web service. Additionally and in regards to migration, I would love the ability to sync profiles between platforms that I have Thunderbird installed. A master profile to sync against could be stored on the centralized web service and then also utilized by a mobile app.

Thank you.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 29, 2020 at 21:48

Great suggestions, thanks for the feedback!

Wayne R wrote on January 30, 2020 at 04:49

If someone makes Thunderbird capable of accepting email recipients on a single line instead of a separate line for each recipient, I would pay for that. Also, start Thunderbird at startup (built into the program rather than a workaround)

I have already been enjoying the dark theme and I am considering making Thunderbird my main desktop email app again.

Thank for for continuing development on the project.

Andreas wrote on January 30, 2020 at 10:31

Hi Wayne,
the single-line feature is already available in the latest beta version. From the release notes: “Redesigned recipient address fields (To, Cc, Bcc) as single-line input fields for multiple addresses instead of one line per address.”

Wayne wrote on January 30, 2020 at 14:11

Yes, this is working quite well

Jeff wrote on January 30, 2020 at 07:47

I’ve used Thunderbird (Mac) for over a decade and wish you success in being able to monetize Thunderbird.

I’ve really love the various speedy message search functions (the quick search and regular search bar as well as Edit->Find->Search Messages features.

But basically, I’m about to give up on Thunderbird. Here’s why:

First and foremost: With every major release (and many minor ones), the developer community has had to develop Add-ons to fix what got broken or to add essential features that were present in other email clients.

I hope that whoever is now stewarding Thunderbird’s development realizes that relying on Add-ons to fix bugs (some unfixed for over a decade) is not good model going forward.

Examples of what I can’t do with the current release, since most of my essential Add-ons were broken with the last architecture change (and extensions.strict.Compatibility doesn’t save my ass anymore):

1. Theme and Font Size Changer. Thunderbird has no why to change the Folder List , Message List, or preview pane font size. I CAN’T SEE the default tiny font!!! This functionality _obviously_ should be a core product functionality and _not_ an Add-on.

2. Quote and Compose Manager. Took care of Thunderbird’s inconsistent formatting behavior.

3. Compact Header/Toggle Headers. Used everyday to help determine scam/spam that got passed my other filters.

Then there are essential annoying bugs that were never fixed in a decade:

1. The weird insert-link behavior in the Compose window. Copying a link from Firefox from a website and then control-rightClick still produces the cryptic #QCMcontainer message (Who is this message for (CSS developers? Does it want page style code? What? All I wanted to do was copy a link and paste it using Mac’s Right-Click (AKA: Control-Click ). The work around: Use option-V. But why did I have to look for a workaround?

2. The only way to end link text–other than doing very weird copy/paste machinations was to discover the “Discontinue {Format, Link} choices in the Format menu. Rather obscure and unnecessary I say.

3. The only way to insert newlines between numbered list elements is shift-return. Try making a numbered list with more than five or so elements separated by newlines and you can’t escape the list with out really weird machinations.

The above are __BASIC_ email client functions. If Thunderbird hopes to monetize itself, then I believe that basic and essential email client features need to (finally) be debugged/added and become stable between releases:

“Add-ons” should be exactly that—they should add functionally and features and _never_ be relied upon to provide essential (core) features or to fix what has been broken between releases.

I do TRULY APPRECIATE that Thunderbird has been maintained by an amazingh, dedicated volunteer developer community and inherent with the territory are the challenges in setting priorities and maintaining consistent direction.

For now I will remain at 60.9.1 so I can maintain my workflow while I search for a new Mac mail client that can do half of what Thunderbird did for me over the years. Perhaps if in its new monetized incarnation Thunderbird actually fixes decades-old bugs and becomes a stable product, I will rejoin its ranks.

The best to everyone in this new endeavor.

Bye for now.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 30, 2020 at 09:38

Hi Jeff, I’m sorry you are having trouble with Thunderbird. Let me see if I can respond to some of your points. With add-ons, I agree with you that bugfixes should be done in the main product. Developers sometimes feel it is easier to create an add-on to fix their pet peeve, which leads to such add-ons being created. In order to grow, we need to make changes to Thunderbird code, just as Mozilla is doing on the underlying Platform we use. This pace is not always compatible with the time add-on developers have available, which leaves many add-ons incompatible. We’re moving towards a more stable add-on platform with less internal changes, which will in turn put less burden on add-on developers and keep them compatible. If there is an add-on you really care about, please do get in touch with the add-on developer and persuade them to update. Of course we’d also enjoy if the add-on authors would work with us to integrate their bugfixes. I understand your frustration though, I hope we can resolve some of these issues in the future!

Thank you for your feedback and support!

Duncan J. wrote on January 30, 2020 at 10:25

Hello,
I hope this is good news for thunderbird.
Is JMAP implementation on your roadmap? If yes, can you share some details?
Thank you

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 30, 2020 at 11:12

We’ll be sharing information on roadmap separately. We do think JMAP is a very interesting protocol and would love to support it!

Duncan J. wrote on January 30, 2020 at 19:23

Dear Philipp,
thank you for your answer. I looked for the roadmap but I wasn’t able to find it. Could you please link it?
Thanks again

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 31, 2020 at 15:55

You’ll be finding information in a future blog post on this matter.

Mark M wrote on January 31, 2020 at 09:13

Great thing, but since the change you report here, I haven’t been able to access my email and there are no ways of talking to anyone!?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on January 31, 2020 at 15:54

Please check out https://support.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird

katsumi wrote on January 31, 2020 at 18:54

Thanks for breathing a new life to the project. Are you planning a complete overhaul similar to firefox browser? If yes, please consider making something similar to iOS mail app or mailspring. For most users a simple clean app with just the basic features would be really great.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 1, 2020 at 12:35

We’re not planning to start from scratch, it will be a gradual transition. We are interested in making things simpler though, users flock to simple products.

Erik Arreola wrote on January 31, 2020 at 19:22

Sounds Great! The company I work for has used Thunderbird across all sites for almost 10 years. And we’ll keep using for many more. One feature I’d like to request is in-house winmail.dat handing vs having to depend on the Lookout (fix version) Add-on. Thank you all for all the work you do!

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 1, 2020 at 12:32

Yes, this would be great! There is an old bug filed on this, someone fixing it would get some serious internet cred for fixing a 5-digit bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77811

guenter wrote on February 2, 2020 at 15:11

Hi Philipp,
good to hear that TB will probably survive!

This bug, You mention, stays open since 19(!) years. And this is not the only oldie!
Before adding new bells & whistles, please, fix the bugs.

Find a way to deal with feature requests from Your users, example:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1486221

Many thanks to all contributors to Thunderbird!

guenter

BTW The donation page is still saying to be faulty as of today(“An error occurred. Please reload the page or try again later.”).

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 2, 2020 at 22:10

There are most certainly a few old bugs out there. Software needs to find a good balance. If we go back and fix all the bugs on bugzilla before we add any new features, we’ll be standing still and it will seem like Thunderbird never moves forward. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be fixing old bugs though. For the donation page, please check if temporarily disabling your ad-blocker or NoScript will resolve the issue.

Internet Abuser wrote on January 31, 2020 at 20:02

Where is the Forum?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 1, 2020 at 12:29

Find us at https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/thunderbird

pc g33k wrote on February 1, 2020 at 00:14

Please for support techs world wide ,Let it DIE. No one wants the help people with this software.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 1, 2020 at 12:38

If you’d like to talk about the pain points you are having as a support tech we’re willing to listen. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll put you in touch with the right folks.

William Tyler Bartlett wrote on February 2, 2020 at 22:01

Fix it.

W T Barttlett wrote on February 2, 2020 at 21:59

If you are a Thunderbird user under no circumstances install the new upgrade. The latest upgrade will loose all your contacts and force you to reinstall all your mail accounts and will not allow you to reorder them. Use old Thunder bird until new home repairs program. Probably should search for different mail server.

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 2, 2020 at 22:05

Losing contacts sounds concerning, I’d love to learn more about this, but the blog isn’t the best place. Can you file a bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org? Please indicate what add-ons you have been using. Reordering mail accounts hasn’t been supported before, so I’m guessing this was also part of an add-on. I hope we can resolve these issues.

W T Barttlett wrote on February 2, 2020 at 23:05

No bug reports contacts gone. E-mail accounts gone from working Mozila Thunderbird. I can’t find the grayed out rearrange option. Broke old working account.

sapeller wrote on February 2, 2020 at 22:16

Instead of moving things to JavaScript go for Rust. E-Mail is an attack vector so we need a fast and secure coding language for our mail client

P Clark wrote on February 4, 2020 at 07:35

Thunderbird has greatly changed the last two months and not for the better to me. It is now time consuming and confusing and a nightmare to use. I am just brokenhearted over this. Is there anyway to get the earlier Thunderbird of six months ago that worked so well for me?

Please!!! This is my work and very serious and this has become just not functional anymore. I have loved it for years. Help?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 4, 2020 at 13:06

I’m sorry you are having difficulties with the newer Thunderbird. I’d love to identify specific issues that make Thunderbird confusing to use and see if we can mitigate. Let’s chat via email instead!

The Mad Scientist wrote on February 4, 2020 at 16:49

Well with all thegriwrh that mozzilla has done over the years it isresllysad that they push the email client off to the side and did not concern themselves with it’s growth as they concentrated only on Firefox tokeepup with Google chrome. Those of us that hate Google products really have been hoping that Thunderbird would have been continuously improved and turned into an Android app as well so that we could really get rid of the Gmail program. Hopefully you all will get your shit together so that we supporters will get a good solid trusted Android app email program from Thunderbird

GeorgeB wrote on February 4, 2020 at 22:17

I have spent 40 years with IBM ret 2001. I have and still use Eudora since its creation at Qualcom . It is just that simple and easy.
My question is will this replace it and remain simple ?

Philipp Kewisch wrote on February 7, 2020 at 12:31

Keeping E-Mail simple is important for Thunderbird. We’re trying to find a good balance between giving power users the features they want while not overcomplicating things. If you have feedback on what we can simplify we’d love to hear it!

Star SANG wrote on February 6, 2020 at 17:52

Just heard about the news and good luck!

– From a TB User in China

dde wrote on February 8, 2020 at 17:48

Sounds like TB is the only free email client these days.

That, combined with RSS, make it not only worthy, but necessary in a time where social networks try to steal our connection to everything. RSS/Atom is THE direct connection between content producer and user for updates.

Configuring TB for RSS is like composing one’s own little journal, that you can read with the mail in the morning.

Free software, free society. Thank you.

Markus Salamon wrote on February 10, 2020 at 10:24

Hi Philipp,

take a look at the email address above which I’ve just come up with a few seconds ago and decide for yourself if you or someone in your team might want to get in touch to discuss a possible feature set around “dynamic addresses”. Currently the “Customize from address” feature only provides rudimentary support of what I’ve been applying successfully for over a decade now and what would also give other users enhanced control over their contact addresses and ultimately their communications.

Congrats on your latest move and kudos to your team
Markus

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