Wow, what a depressing day for Thunderbird fans!   According to several reports from all over the place, Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker announced on her blog that they feel that they are not able to devote the time and resources that are needed for Thunderbird to thrive.   As a result, they are exploring a few different possible futures for the e-mail client so that they can focus on Firefox.  While this is definitely a good thing for Firefox, this could be disastrous for Thunderbird fans around the globe.  How will this work?  Here are the 3 options they have provided:

1. Create a new non-profit organization analogous to the Mozilla Foundation – a Thunderbird foundation. If it turns out Thunderbird generates a revenue model from the product as Firefox does, then a Thunderbird foundation could follow the Mozilla Foundation model and create a subsidiary.This model probably offers the maximum independence for Thunderbird. But it is also the most organizationally complex.
2. Create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird. This has less overhead, although it still requires a new company that serves the mission of the Mozilla Foundation. In this case the Mozilla Foundation board and personnel would remain involved in Thunderbird. The Thunderbird effort may therefore still end up with less focus and less flexibility.
3. Thunderbird is released as a community project much like SeaMonkey or Camino, and a small independent services and consulting company is formed by the Thunderbird developers to continue development and care for Thunderbird users. Many open source projects use this model.  

No matter which one they go with, as a Thunderbird user it doesn’t look good for the future of the e-mail client I enjoy.  Under Mozilla’s supervision, the e-mail client was improving at a very slow pace, but it was being improved regularly.   Now that it looks like the project won’t be supervised by Mozilla any longer, we may see more progress and focus on the desktop e-mail client, or it may just disappear all together. 

In my opinion, they need an integrated calendar such as Microsoft Outlook offers to be considered a true competitor to Microsoft Outlook.  Sunbird is a very capable extension for personal use, but it isn’t going to work for major corporations that need this feature built-in and functional before making the switch. 

This is definitely wishful thinking, but I would like to see Google take over the Thunderbird project, add a functional built-in calendar system, and of course add my tabbed e-mails I’ve been waiting for!  It is already easily linked with GMail, so it could also unofficially serve as a desktop version of GMail.   The time and money Google could contribute, along with the power of the open source community could combine to make a pretty powerful desktop e-mail client.  

There is no doubt in my mind that as people get away from relying on Microsoft’s Office suite (for OpenOffice, Google’s Online Suite, or Zoho), they will be more open to ditching Microsoft Outlook.  This is because I feel Outlook’s integration with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access are probably it’s biggest selling points, especially to large corporations.   Google could really take advantage of this, while doing a great service for the open source community.  

What do you think?  Sound off in the comments below!

Since the recent release of Thunderbird 2.0, there has been rampant speculation about the features in Thunderbird 3.0. The most anticipated feature is something that I’m not aware of any other e-mail services having, and that is Firefox-style tabs. I was happy to see today that now it has finally been confirmed that the ability to open messages in tabs has been added to Thunderbird in-development code. Mozilla Links has provided this screenshot showing how the tabs currently look:

How sweet will this be? This is something that will give desktop e-mail users a good reason to finally make that switch from Microsoft Office. I currently use both in some form, but I think I could permanently switch to Thunderbird with this addition.

In other Thunderbird news, the Firefox Extension Guru offers tips on how to access Thunderbird’s About Config.

I cover a large variety of technology related topics on this site, but my favorite area has always been the web browser.   There are several mainstream browsers with Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 2.0, and Opera 9.0 leading the field.  The next level of web browsers includes Apple’s Safari browser (which comes with MAC OS X) and the Flock web browser, which will soon be releasing version 1.0 which is based on Firefox 2.0.  The third tier consists of a browser that many people haven’t heard of, unless you were browsing the web back in the early 1990′s.

That long forgotten web browser is America Online’s Netscape Navigator, which is still around and working on version 9.0.  According to their blog, it looks like they have officially released the first beta version of 9.0.  One of the reasons this release is significant is because they are claiming that their browser shares its architecture with the latest Mozilla technologies, making Firefox 2.0 extensions compatible with it!  Other listed features include:

• URL Correction
• News Menu and Sidebar
• Sidebar Mini-browser
• In-browser voting

To see what else is new with this version, check out there official What’s New document.  Their is definitely some innovative ideas coming from the Netscape Navigator team.   Are having Firefox extensions available enough to convert people?  I’m not sure yet, but I’m planning on playing around with this new beta version.

Will you be trying Netscape Navigator 9.0?

CyberNet has posted that Mozilla has updated their Thunderbird Wiki page with early details about Thunderbird 3.0.

Some of the things they are looking at in this version:

• Easier Account Setup
• Simple Extension Installation

My hope is that they are working on a tabbing system similar to the one in the Firefox web browser.

I found that I was using Windows Explorer regularly for everyday functions, so I did some searching and was pleased to see that some free upgrades were available.   Techie Buzz has offered up some alternatives to Windows Explorer for Windows users. 

So far, my early favorite is xplorer², which is really convenient and easy to use.  It looks similar for those that don’t like change, but adds an extra pane.  The other Techie Buzz offers are:

• ExplorerXP
• QTTabbar

I have updated my Best of: Free Software to reflect these great alternatives.