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Mozilla drops $3m on new company to develop Thunderbird
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CommentsMozilla announced plans this week to sink $3 million into a new Mozilla Foundation project designed to enhance the Thunderbird mail client. Early reports indicate that the as-yet-unnamed newly formed company will focus on positioning Thunderbird for use in Internet communications, including Web-based email, IM, and SMS.
The new organization, code-named MailCo, will be headed up by longtime Mozilla community member and CTO of ActiveState, David Ascher. Along with Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker, he will lead a new development team that is "dedicated to developing, innovating, and improving Internet mail and communication software," using Thunderbird as a starting point. Ascher acknowledges that such a project is a massive undertaking but says he is dedicated to "making email better."
On her Mozillazine blog, Baker writes that the initial seed money will be primarily spent on building a small team for the project but additional funding is expected. The company already has a preliminary plan, however, and Baker says they center around four goals:
- Take care of Thunderbird users.
- Move Thunderbird forward to provide better, deeper email solutions.
- Create a better user experience for a range of Internet communications -- how does or how should email work with IM, RSS, VoIP, SMS, site-specific email, etc.?
- Spark the types of community involvement and innovation that the project has seen around Web browsing and Firefox.
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Mozilla drops $3m on new company to develop Thunderbird
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 71.76.24.36] on September 18, 2007 03:16 PMRe: Mozilla drops $3m on new company to develop Thunderbird
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 213.143.81.224] on September 22, 2007 10:10 AMMozilla drops $3m on new company to develop Thunderbird
Posted by: Lisa on September 18, 2007 05:39 PMHow about just making it work right in the first place?
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 67.63.223.18] on September 19, 2007 06:12 PMWhat about just making it stable? The single biggest joke about TB is it's instability. Why does it freeze up for about 20 seconds the first time you try to compose a message? (Noticed this on Mac and on Windows - no plugins but enigmail). Why does it lock up completely at all?
Why is it so blasted difficult to setup signatures?
Why is there so little integration with system address books? (This plays into the LDAP problem).
I mean, is it really time to talk about moving it "forward" when they still can't get basic functionality right?
Mozilla drops $3m on new company to develop Thunderbird
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 76.114.147.255] on September 22, 2007 11:15 PMD.
Mozilla drops $3m on new company to develop Thunderbird
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 207.96.197.8] on September 18, 2007 03:14 PM#