Finally, some real news about the fate of Thunderbird. David Ascher, Mozilla Messaging CEO, discusses the details in his blog:

Today we’ve announced the launch of Mozilla Messaging, the new name for the entity I’ve been calling MailCo on this blog. As promised, it’s a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, focused on email and internet communications. We’ve put up the essential information about the organization on the website, but I have more room for background here.

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I am saddened by continued reports that support for Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird, continues to diminish. From DesktopLinux:

The Mozilla Foundation's press release focused on the Firefox 2.12 security fixes.
The Foundation also reported, though, in its MFSA (Mozilla Foundation
Security Advisory), that these same bugs had been fixed in the
fictitious Thunderbird 2.12...

...Still, it is upsetting that
Mozilla reports that these problems have been fixed in a version of
Thunderbird that doesn't exist. The latest version of Thunderbird is
2.09.

Mitchell Baker posted last September the transfer of Thunderbird from Mozilla to a yet to be seen Mailco organization. Just as DesktopLinux mentioned in their article, I've seen little information about what we can with regards to Thunderbird's future. Perhaps, I'm just not looking in the wrong places?

Laura Scott posted her 9 best practices and things to avoid when it comes to e-mail. We followed some of these rules a decade ago, but a good reminder is always appreciated. Laura doesn't mention anything about not using all CAPS in an e-mail and I assume that's because if you don't know that rule by now...nine rules is beyond your grasp.

My favorite rule to follow is number 3:

Write your response above the quoted text.

I don't think I'm alone when I say I don't like having to scroll down just to read what you have written. I already know what I wrote -- and if I don't remember, I can scroll down to look. When you deal with over 100 real emails a day, this becomes all the more important.

Don't make me scroll! Please!

I've always been unsure where to place the quoted text in an e-mail. If I recall correctly, doesn't (didn't) Thunderbird place the quote above text by default? I'm sure it's Mozilla's fault as to why I'm so confused...

"The result is that Mozilla is launching a new effort to improve email and internet communications. We will increase our investment and focus on our current email client -- Thunderbird -- and on innovations in the email and communications areas. We are doing so by creating a new organization with this as its sole focus and committing resources to this organization. The new organization doesn't have a name yet, so I'll call it MailCo here. MailCo will be part of the Mozilla Foundation and will serve the public benefit mission of the Mozilla Foundation. (Technically, it will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, just like the Mozilla Corporation.)"

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Michael Kaply is starting a new series on the use of Mozilla's Firefox as enterprise software.  In Part 1 he discusses the obstacles for Firefox to to be adopted in the enterprise.

As Firefox gains marketshare, there comes a point where increasing that marketshare depends on the adoption of Firefox in large enterprises. This article investigates what type of issues arise when supporting Firefox in a large enterprise, and what can be done to solve those issues.

The primary areas I will address are:

• Release Lifecycle
• Service and Support
• Business Value
• Third Party Applications
• Intranet Applications
• Deployment issues

In my own organization we have used Netscape/Mozilla products for years especially on the e-mail client side (with Thunderbird currently on every desktop in the office).  However, in today's enterprise environment you need something more than just a good browser or e-mail client on your people's desktop.  IT needs to be able to control, secure, and deploy software much more easily then what Seamonkey, Thunderbird, and Firefox currently provide.  Originally, I had hoped that Mozilla would make better use of the Microsoft Installer (.MSI) and deliver better integration with the Windows Active Directory/Group Policy scheme but such features and abilities never really seemed to surface.

Read more at the Open Source Community...

Mozilla's flagship e-mail client, Thunderbird, is now available under version 2.0. I've been running the Thunderbird 2.0 nightly development versions for almost six months without any problems. I expect Thunderbird users will have little problem with upgrading from version 1.5 to version 2.0. Straight from the release notes I've listed at the bottom of this post are the new features users will find in Thunderbird 2. None of the new features are earth shattering for e-mail clients but I do find comfort that Mozilla can always teach its software new tricks.

One of the new features that is listed for Thunderbird 2 is the use of Nullsoft Scriptable Install System as the new Windows installer. The message reads that the new installer "resolves many long-standing issues". For anyone that might know, I'd be curious as to exactly what the long-standing issues were? Were the issues merely technical or were there some political open source issues involved with the decision? Just curious as I haven't had the time to dig through some of the developer blogs/notes for the advantages of using the Nullsoft installer.

"But with popular web-based e-mail services from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, which just announced that it will offer unlimited storage, the need for a desktop e-mail client seems to be fading.

So we asked Scott MacGregor, Thunderbird's lead engineer, why anyone needs Thunderbird these days, and he had a pretty good answer. He also talked about Mozilla's open-source development model and told us what new features to expect when Thunderbird 2 becomes available."

 

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Some critical security and stability updates have been made available for my favorite Internet browser, Firefox, as well as my favorite e-mail client, Thunderbird.

As part of Mozilla Corporation's ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 1.5.0.9, Firefox 2.0.0.1, and Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from getfirefox.com & getthunderbird.com.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. This update is available immediately in 41 languages including Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Hungarian, and more.

For those of you that procrastinate, it is also probably good to note that the folks at Mozilla are also recommending Firefox 1.5 users to go ahead and upgrade to Firefox 2.   That recommendation is based on the fact that support for Firefox 1.5 will officially end on April 24, 2007.  You can read more about this latest Firefox and Thunderbird release on Mozilla.org's Press Releases and Announcement page.