Mozilla has officially put its Thunderbird email client out to pasture by dropping development of the app. The organization said that continuing to develop Thunderbird isn’t a priority any more, but is leaving the door open for the developer community to pick up and carry forward the app.
Mozilla retires Thunderbird
Thunderbird will be split into two versions: Thunderbird ESR, which will continue to get official security updates from Mozilla, and Thunderbird for the developer community to use and update as they wish.
“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,” the group said in a blog post.
There haven’t been any changes to the Thunderbird code since Mozilla’s announcement, so it’s too early to tell if other developers will take the app and run with it. Without official Mozilla support, however, it isn’t likely that the app will gain mainstream support.