History of Mozilla Thunderbird

Originally launched as "Minotaur" shortly after "Phoenix" (the original name for Mozilla Firefox), the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the Mozilla Firefox, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name of Thunderbird, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.

Early beginnings: A simple email and news client

Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onwards, the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasts with the previous all-in-one approach, and will hopefully lead to more efficient and maintainable code, as well as allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives.

The original Thunderbird logo was just a modified Firebird logo: with a simple shifting of hue value from red to blue. In 2004, together with the change of Firefox's visual identity by Jon Hicks, a more professional logo that is currently in use [http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/thunderbird was introduced] .

Release history

Parts of this table are based on the [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/roadmap.html Thunderbird roadmap] .

Note (1): [http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6247 Version 1.0.1 was planned but not shipped] due to delay and discovery of issues that needed fixing in all three of Mozilla Foundation's products.

Note (2): There were no version 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 since the bugs/issues affected Firefox only.

Note (3): There was no version 1.5.0.3.

Note (4): There was no version 1.5.0.6.

Note (5): There were no versions 2.0.0.1, 2.0.0.2 and 2.0.0.3.

Note (6): There were no versions 2.0.0.7 and 2.0.0.8.

Note (7): There were no versions 2.0.0.10 and 2.0.0.11.

Note (8): There was no version 2.0.0.13

Note (9): There was no version 2.0.0.15

Future development

On December 23 2004, the Project Lightning was announced for tightly integrating calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is just a project name, but not a product name. Lightning 0.1 was released on March 14, 2006. The current version is 0.8, which was released on April 4, 2008.

Also on October 11, 2006, Qualcomm and the Mozilla Foundation [http://www.eudora.com/press/2006/eudora-mozilla_final_10.11.06.html announced] that "future versions of Eudora will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird email program." The project is code-named [http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope Penelope] . An unofficial [http://emailman.newsgrouphosting.com/readgroup?group=emailman.software.clients.eudora.penelope Eudora/Penelope forum] is accessible via web or newsreader.

On July 26 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced that Thunderbird would be developed by an independent organization, because the Mozilla Corporation (the for profit portion of Mozilla) is focusing on Mozilla Firefox development. This change is being done in order to stimulate development in Thunderbird, which has been neglected during the Mozilla focus on Firefox. [cite news |first=Thomas |last=Claburn |title=Mozilla Gives Thunderbird E-Mail The Boot |url=http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201201609 |work=Internet section |publisher=InformationWeek |date=27 July 2007 |accessdate=2007-07-31 ]

On September 17 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced the funding of a new internet communications initiative with Dr. David Ascher of ActiveState. The purpose of this initiative is "to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand".

On February 19 2008, Mozilla Messaging started operations as a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation responsible for the development of email and similar communications. Its initial focus is the upcoming version of Thunderbird 3.

See also

*Mozilla Thunderbird
*History of Mozilla Application Suite
*History of free software

References

External links

* [http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases Mozilla release schedule for recent and upcoming versions of Thunderbird and Firefox]
* [http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/releases/ Thunderbird release notes for each version]
* [http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/ Downloadable versions of Thunderbird from OSUOSL]
* [http://www.rumblingedge.com/2005/06/05/thunderbird-release-changelogs/ The Rumbling Edge: Thunderbird release changelogs]
* [http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/thunderbird Jon Hicks describing the process of making Mozilla Thunderbird's logo]