The Mozilla Foundation announced today the official launch of Mozilla Messaging, a new subsidiary dedicated to creating open-source Internet communication software. The organization, which is headed by former ActiveState CTO David Ascher, will take on stewardship of Mozilla Thunderbird. The newly-formed subsidiary has also revealed plans for Thunderbird 3, the next major version of the open source mail client. Mozilla Messaging has hired a small staff of developers that will work alongside community contributors to move the initiative forward. In addition to Ascher, the organization's board of directors includes Mozilla Labs VP Christopher Beard and MySQL AB CEO Marten Mickos.
Mozilla first revealed its intentions to spin off a separate entity for Thunderbird back in July, when former Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker wrote a blog entry describing some potential approaches to structuring a new hypothetical nest for Thunderbird. The plans began to solidify when Mozilla revealed that the new organization would be headed by Ascher and would be given $3 million in seed funding.
Today's announcement, which marks the finalization of Thunderbird's emergence into autonomy, provides much insight into the direction that Mozilla's e-mail hatchling intends to fly. Ascher enumerates a short list of planned features for Thunderbird 3, including support for integrated calendaring, improved search, and usability improvements.
Where Thunderbird is headed
"Our plan starts with building a great product. Firefox has shown that if you have a great product that tens of millions of people love to use daily, doors open and more opportunities become within reach. So we'll focus on the product," wrote Ascher in a blog entry. "We've started defining what Thunderbird 3 will be, because we think that there is enough consensus to make some of the first decisions on the most important changes to tackle first. Specifically, Thunderbird 3 will build on the great base that is Thunderbird 2." Ascher also says that the organization will work on incrementally improving the underlying architecture of Thunderbird and notes that it wants to take advantage of the platform improvements that have been developed for Firefox 3. Mozilla Messaging plans to aggressively leverage the technical strengths of Firefox, like the high potential for customization and strong HTML rendering. The organization will also look closely at emerging trends in communication and consider possibilities for integrating support for other services beyond e-mail.
Mozilla Messaging also launched its new web site today, which provides more information about tentative plans for Thunderbird and encourages users to get involved with the project. The Mozilla Messaging initiative appears to be off to a good start. Ascher clearly has a compelling vision for the future of Thunderbird, and community interest seems to be very strong. Mozilla Messaging has the potential to bring a lot of innovation to the Internet communication space, and there are many opportunities for the organization to explore. I look forward to seeing open-source e-mail evolve as the Mozilla Messaging community grows.
"Our plan starts with building a great product. Firefox has shown that if you have a great product that tens of millions of people love to use daily, doors open and more opportunities become within reach. So we'll focus on the product," wrote Ascher in a blog entry. "We've started defining what Thunderbird 3 will be, because we think that there is enough consensus to make some of the first decisions on the most important changes to tackle first. Specifically, Thunderbird 3 will build on the great base that is Thunderbird 2." Ascher also says that the organization will work on incrementally improving the underlying architecture of Thunderbird and notes that it wants to take advantage of the platform improvements that have been developed for Firefox 3. Mozilla Messaging plans to aggressively leverage the technical strengths of Firefox, like the high potential for customization and strong HTML rendering. The organization will also look closely at emerging trends in communication and consider possibilities for integrating support for other services beyond e-mail.
Mozilla Messaging also launched its new web site today, which provides more information about tentative plans for Thunderbird and encourages users to get involved with the project. The Mozilla Messaging initiative appears to be off to a good start. Ascher clearly has a compelling vision for the future of Thunderbird, and community interest seems to be very strong. Mozilla Messaging has the potential to bring a lot of innovation to the Internet communication space, and there are many opportunities for the organization to explore. I look forward to seeing open-source e-mail evolve as the Mozilla Messaging community grows.
