Mozilla stops adding new features to its Thunderbird email client

Mozilla, the organisation behind Firefox and Thunderbird, has announced that it will not be working on adding new features to its popular open-source email program, Thunderbird. Security updates will still be released. New features may be included if they are created by the Thunderbird community.

The announcement was made in a blog post by Mitchell Baker, the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation. He stated that the rise of accessing email through webmail services in a browser has made Thunderbird less important. Mozilla also feels that Thunderbird has not been as innovative as had been hoped and that the majority of users are happy with the features currently offered by Thunderbird. Mozilla estimates that around 20 million people use Thunderbird.

The new plan for Thunderbird releases will see a new version released in November that will be updated every six weeks with improvements for security and stability. There will still be the possibility of adding new features if the Thunderbird community is able to create them.

Thunderbird Extended Support Release is a version of Thunderbird designed for groups or organisations. Every release of this version of Thunderbird is supported for a year with security updates. It places more importance on security updates than including the very latest features.