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Comment by cookiengineer | Hacker News Reader

Note that Mozilla has nothing to do with Thunderbird anymore. They abandoned Thunderbird and it's a totally separate community project these days.

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I probably know less than you, but at least the linked donations page https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/k9mail/ has heavy mozilla branding and also talks about "Mozilla Thunderbird"...

thunderbird.net states at the bottom: Thunderbird is now part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation.

Thunderbird operates independently within Mozilla:

> There was a time when Thunderbird’s future was uncertain, and it was unclear what was going to happen to the project after it was decided Mozilla Corporation would no longer support it. But in recent years donations from Thunderbird users have allowed the project to grow and flourish organically within the Mozilla Foundation. Now, to ensure future operational success, following months of planning, we are forging a new path forward. Moving to MZLA Technologies Corporation will not only allow the Thunderbird project more flexibility and agility, but will also allow us to explore offering our users products and services that were not possible under the Mozilla Foundation

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/

Still a far ways from having "nothing to do" with it

Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are not the same thing.

To clarify, the comment in question was

> Note that Mozilla has nothing to do with Thunderbird anymore.

which fails to claim anything about the Mozilla Foundation or Corporation in particular.

I agree that "nothing to do" is a strong statement but it's neither "Mozilla Foundation" nor "Mozilla Corporation". It's "MZLA Technologies Corporation".

When they announced the split, I seem to remember reading it's setup pretty much the same way as the Mozilla Corporation, so as a corporate subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation.

But the page literally says:

> ... MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation.

Ha, Firefox should move out too!

> Note that Mozilla has nothing to do with Thunderbird anymore.

Mozilla the non-profit owns the for-profit corp who owns Thunderbird.

In their own words from the footer of https://www.thunderbird.net:

> Thunderbird is now part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation.

... which is in conflict with the Thunderbird FAQ [1]:

> Who makes Thunderbird?

> Thunderbird is developed, tested, translated and supported largely by group of dedicated volunteers, plus paid staff. Thunderbird is an independent, community driven project. Therefore its paid staff, budget and fundraising are entirely managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird Community. Thunderbird development is made possible by funds donated by the Thunderbird community. (Mozilla Corporation, the makers of Firefox, and Mozilla Messaging no longer develop Thunderbird. But Mozilla still supports Thunderbird by hosting many of the Thunderbird resources.)

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-faq#w_who-m...

I wonder if the future of Firefox is becoming primarily a community driven project. I kind of hope so.

There's no conflict there. Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation are separate entities, Corporation being owned by Foundation. Thunderbird is no longer developed by Corporation. It does still receive support from Foundation.

It's still part of mozilla the company and has a special advantage in that they can actually receive donations directly, unlike the browser project.

Though they aren't tax deductible. So I wonder how much they actually get.

Having decided to just look while writing this comment, apparently it was a couple million last year? Which doesn't seem bad.

Yeah, the 3 million that Thunderbird specifically got in donations last year is absurd. I suspect it’s more than any other user-facing non profit open source application.

> that they can actually receive donations directly, unlike the browser project.

I would love to donate to the browser, while my small donation won't make it independent from Google's money it might be a small step towards it.

I don't especially mind their political agenda, however that's not what I want to donate to, I have other political orgs I prefer.

P=P is based on K-9 and had a material design UI long before K-9 had it.

Postbox is based on Thunderbird with a more modern UI, but its Windows and macOS only (does work in Wine).

I stick with FairEmail on Android for now. Its completely FOSS and in active development.

I've seen P=P (or pEp) and even used it, but I've never heard anyone mention it till now. Visually it's clear its a fork of K9, but you can't find any trace of that on their website or repo (it's self hosted). Seems to be no community around it, while it seems a solid choice, especially if you use openpgp. Have you used it?

Sorry for not making it clear. I've used P=P (or actually the correct name is p≡p or pEp) before when FairEmail wasn't existent or in its very early days, and K-9 still did not have material design. I believe the material design got backported to K-9. This was during a time when K-9 didn't get stable releases, and was lacking on development. They also use opportunistic encryption, but I frankly just assume e-mail is insecure communication and live with that thought. I've mentioned the applications (pEp and FairEmail) various times here and elsewhere.

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