Trouble At The Henhouse: Thunderbird Loses Key Developers
Mozilla’s popular desktop e-mail application, Thunderbird, lost two of its core developers over the weekend. Scott McGregor and David Bienvenu are both leaving Mozilla this week, but both said they will continue to work of the Thunderbird project as volunteers.
McGregor writes on his blog, “I plan to continue on, as a volunteer, with my role as a module owner for the Thunderbird project.” Likewise Bienvenu says he will “stay involved with Thunderbird.”
Still, the departure of two members of the Thunderbird team at the same time has many worried about the future of the application. But with Mozilla recently sending Thunderbird off as its own corporation, the concern may be misplaced.
To head off speculations of Thunderbird’s demise back when Mozilla announced it was spinning the project off from the Firefox camp, Bienvenu posted an interesting and detailed look at the Thunderbird team and the breakdown of labor. As it turns out, quite a lot of the work on Thunderbird falls on volunteers.
Here’s how the Thunderbird workload breaks down, according to Bienvenu:
- 2 Full Time Mail developers (David and Scott)
- ~ 12 active mail developer volunteers (including Seamonkey Mail contributors)
- 4 Thunderbird front end peers & module owners
- over 35 localizations done entirely by volunteers
- 8 back end peers & module owners.
- Over the last six months, 56% of the mail patches originated from community members
- 93 different developers contributed at least one patch over that period.
What remains unclear is who will replace Bienvenu and McGregor and how much Mozilla plans to beef up the Thunderbird staff as the project transitions to its new home at the Thunderbird Mail Corporation.
Still, whatever the case, I don’t think it’s time to worry about the demise of Thunderbird just yet. Web-based e-mail has made some gains, and Microsoft Exchange users continue to need Outlook, but there’s still a healthy audience for Thunderbird. While McGregor and Bienvenu may not be at it as a day job anymore, that doesn’t mean Thunderbird is doomed.
[via Slashdot]
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