Mozilla Messaging Starts Up Operations

New open source organization kicks off development of Thunderbird 3

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - February 19, 2008 - Mozilla Messaging, the new mail focused subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, today announced that it has begun operations.

The initial focus for Mozilla Messaging is the development of Thunderbird 3, which will deliver significant improvements, notably integrated calendaring, better search and enhancements to the overall user experience. Thunderbird is a free, open source email application that is used by millions of people around the world and is built using the same open source development model as the award-winning Mozilla Firefox Web browser.

Mozilla Messaging has staffed a small product development team who will work as part of a community of contributors from around the world.

"We're excited to renew the focus of our open source community on the future of Thunderbird," said David Ascher, CEO, Mozilla Messaging. "Every one of us is committed to building a great email product that people will love to use and that serves as the foundation for choice in a critical area of Internet software."

Mozilla Messaging is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The board of directors consists of David Ascher, CEO, Mozilla Messaging; Christopher Beard, VP and General Manager, Mozilla Labs; and Marten Mickos, CEO of open source database vendor MySQL AB.

"Thunderbird email is a vital part of the Mozilla project which brings freedom to hundreds of millions of internet users worldwide," said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. "By joining the board of Mozilla Messaging, I hope to help the world communicate better."

For more information, please see the FAQ and the following blog post from David Ascher:

About Mozilla

Mozilla is a global community dedicated to building free, open source products and technologies that improve the online experience for people everywhere. We work in the open with a highly disciplined, transparent and cooperative development process, under the umbrella of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. As a wholly owned subsidiary, Mozilla Messaging organizes the development and marketing of email and communications products, including the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. For more information, visit www.mozillamessaging.com.

Mozilla Messaging Starts Up Operations: FAQ

What’s the news?

Three key bits:

  1. Thunderbird 3 will include calendaring, better search, and better overall user experience, much like Firefox 3. We’re hoping for a release in late 2008 -- the exact timing will depend on who joins this collective effort.
  2. As promised in September, we’ve created a new organization with a laser focus on mail and communication. This new company, Mozilla Messaging Inc., is a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, just like Mozilla Corporation. Its website is at www.mozillamessaging.com. Its board of directors consists of David Ascher, the CEO, Chris Beard, VP and General Manager of Mozilla Labs, and Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB.
  3. In some ways we’re re-launching Thunderbird -- it’s a project that has huge latent potential, and we’re there to catalyze community driven progress in the Internet communications space. The world of electronic communications is buzzing, with older technologies like email still crucial to our online experience, but complemented by other technologies like instant messaging, social networking, voice over IP, and mobile devices.

What is the new name of MailCo?

Mozilla Messaging, Inc., to reflect both that this is a Mozilla company, and that we’re focusing on the Internet messaging and communications space as a whole, not just email.

What have you, David, been doing since the original announcement of the formation of Mailco?

Lots of recruiting, as picking the right initial team for this new company is going to be key to our success. In addition, I’ve been talking to lots of people who care about Thunderbird, including developers, individual and institutional users, and possible industrial partners. From that, building a larger understanding of the market needs in the email, messaging and calendaring space, and identifying where Mozilla should apply its resources.

Have you hired any new employees?

We have built a core of strong engineers with experience with the Mozilla platform, as well as a build engineer and a user experience lead. Together with David Ascher, Dan Mosedale, the team will coordinate the community of contributors who will help make Thunderbird 3 a reality.

What is happening to Thunderbird?

Thunderbird is finally getting the attention it deserves, with a core development team, a motivated community effort, and a community of contributors who are eager to move the product forward.

Do you have a product roadmap set?

We’ve started a discussion with the community on the Thunderbird 3 roadmap, and will be starting a longer-term discussion on Thunderbird’s long-term roadmap over the coming months.

What about the existing calendaring add-on?

We’ll be integrating Lightning, the popular calendar add-on, into the core of Thunderbird, in close collaboration with the Mozilla Calendar team.

Who made the Lightning add-on?

Lightning is a community project with both individual and corporate participants, including significant contributions from Sun Microsystems.

What will happen to Sunbird, the standalone calendaring client?

Our primary focus will be on Thunderbird and integration of calendaring into the mail client. If enough developers want to pursue the development of the Sunbird standalone client (which shares a lot of technology with Lightning), we’ll certainly help them in that effort.

What else will be new for Thunderbird 3?

A lot. One major driving force for change in Thunderbird 3 will be a better user experience, from easier configuration to faster search and other user interface improvements. The specific improvements haven’t been decided yet, as the user experience lead has just been hired, and we’ll figure all of these changes in concert with the community. We’re also going to be doing some housecleaning of the underlying code, to make it easier for third parties to extend it through add-ons.

Has the change of management at Mozilla impacted Mailco?

Not at all. John Lilly and Mitchell Baker are both 100% supportive of this effort.

Who do you report to? John or Mitchell?

Neither. David Ascher, as CEO, reports to the board of Mozilla Messaging. The Mozilla Foundation is the sole shareholder. Mozilla Messaging is a sister company to Mozilla Corporation, which is also a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation.

Have you developed a strategy to generate revenue?

Our top priority is building a successful product. We’re focused on delivering a polished product that users love to use. That strategy has worked well for Firefox, and we’re optimistic that we can come up with a business model that similarly drives revenue by providing users with great software.

How are customers reacting to the changes with Thunderbird and MailCo?

The people we’ve talked to are very happy that Mozilla is investing in Thunderbird and are looking forward to next evolution of the product. Most users probably haven’t noticed anything, which is on purpose, as we’ve made sure there’s no disruption to their experience.

Why create a new company, why not just do this as part of Mozilla Corp?

The Mozilla Corporation is a smoothly functioning organization, which is tuned to the web. While it is tackling a huge array of projects, they all overlap in making the web experience the best it can be. The challenges of email and internet communications are related to the web, but different enough that we felt the right structure to tackle both areas as effectively as possible was to create two sister organizations, cooperating where it makes sense, but able to act autonomously of one another.