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Comment by nocman | Hacker News Reader

It is still a separate project. Mozilla is just collecting donations for them:

"While Thunderbird is now an independent project separate from Mozilla, Mozilla has agreed to collect donations on our behalf"

( quote above is from https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird?utm_source=tb_b... )

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The disclaimer at the bottom of the donate page is strange:

>Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, (...) to support Thunderbird. Mozilla reserves the right to find another use for the funds if it determines that Thunderbird is no longer furthering Mozilla’s mission.

Is that true if it's now a separate project?

I've set up a regular monthly donation specifically to support Thunderbird development because having a FLOSS email client I can trust is extremely important to me.

I also donated today after reading their 2019 post. I've relied on Thunderbird for years. Having an independent, open source, and cross-platform email client with no vendor lock-in is important to me.

Thanks, this was really confusing me for a while since their donation link points to Mozilla, but they have this text right on their application launch page: "Thunderbird is no longer funded by Mozilla."

It is weird to see it at blogs.mozilla.org then…

It is not weird, just because it is now independent it does not mean they cannot collaborate or that Mozilla wont help them in restricted but significant ways.

> "Our team grew considerably in 2018, to eight staff working full-time on Thunderbird. At the beginning of this year we are going to be adding as many as six new members to our team."

Who are these staff members working full-time for, then?

Contractors chosen by the Thunderbird Council (a group of volunteers from the community) and paid by third-party donations. Mozilla just serves as the fiscal intermediary.

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