Mozilla to spin off Thunderbird email client; will focus on browser

The Mozilla web browser is indeed a great product and just recently, the same finally made it to Apple’s iOS App Store after being available on Android for long. And with all of that app development effort Mozilla needs to focus on just its browser for now, says Mozilla Chairperson, Mitchell Baker. And with that focus in mind, the company wants to get its Thunderbird email client out of the way. Whether or not Mozilla plans to give Thunderbird off to a business partner or maintain it as a separate entity was not discussed in Mitchell’s company-wide memo. “Engineers working on Thunderbird must focus on keeping up and adapting Firefox’s web-driven changes. Engineers working on Firefox and related projects end up considering the competing demands of Thunderbird, and/or wondering if and how much they should assist Thunderbird. Neither project can focus wholeheartedly on what is best for it.” she wrote. The email client that saw great success individually seems to be lost especially since it has no mobile app like Microsoft and Google do. More importantly, continuous support in the form of updates seems to be becoming a task (even with a dedicated open source community) that forces the team to move their focus off their main product, the Mozilla web browser. Additionally, Thunderbird exists in an age where Google has made it common place to access its business and personal email accounts from a browser (web-based) and oddly, Mozilla has its very own, so it is a clashing interest of sorts.