After reading a bunch of negative comments here, let me add a little on the bright side. I've been using Thunderbird for many years, currently both at home and at work to manage gmail accounts, pop at home, imap in the office. It works great for me, with a few annoyances but nothing serious.
As for the donations, Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now, so I don't think much about specific org structure and will gladly donate.
Maybe on paper there're dozens of alternatives, but when I consider my specific requirements, I haven't found anything better, YMMV.
bachmeier 35 minutes ago [-]
I've been using Thunderbird for decades, I've donated in the past, and am likely to donate again. With that out of the way, the lack of transparency as to what happens to my money kills the incentive to donate.
"How will my gift be used?"
"Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development."
Well that tells me exactly nothing. This might not be as big an issue if they were separate from Mozilla. To be concrete, and focusing only on the development of Firefox, there's now an AI chatbot in the sidebar. I think that's a good addition. However, when the only options are proprietary services, it's hard for me to see the point of Firefox. It would be easier to get out my credit card for Thunderbird if I didn't have those thoughts in the back of my mind. As it stands, my donation might be going to fund the Mozilla CEO's salary.
cycomanic 25 minutes ago [-]
I find that a weird sentiment. Why do people demand to know and control how every one of their donations goes, while nobody questions how corporations use their money. Ironically, the demand for this increased transparency significantly increases compliance cost, which means more and more money is driven away from the actual cause toward the administrative costs. Exactly what people don't want to support.
sassymuffinz 9 minutes ago [-]
I don't think it's that weird. If they sold it as a product then the understanding is that there is a profit motive and profits mean CEO's get paid.
If you're asking for donations and holding your cap out, the implication is that every penny will go toward development.
Mozilla should either just make it a product that you have to pay for, or sub to, or keep donations cleanly separated.
sph 23 minutes ago [-]
> Your gift helps ensure it stays that way
Written this way, it sounds like "donate or we'll have to make you pay for it"
Skywalker13 2 hours ago [-]
I use Thunderbird from the beginning when it was still named Firebird (I switched from Outlook Express). I think that it's a good product because it continues to do the job since more than 20 years. Me too I don't understand the negative comments. It's free (MPL license), it's packaged by Debian. All good. I don't care about Mozilla.
Skywalker13 2 hours ago [-]
I just check something because my memory as faults... Firebird was the name of Firefox and the mail client was called something like Mozilla mail or something else.
CamouflagedKiwi 2 hours ago [-]
It was originally Minotaur (when the browser was Phoenix), then they were Firebird and Thunderbird, until the browser renamed to avoid a name clash.
Foobar8568 1 hours ago [-]
I really don't remember (+quick check) Firebird for the email client, do you have source for this?
wisidisi 1 hours ago [-]
Predecessor of Firefox was Firebird, and before that it was even called Phoenix.
Firebird was the browser's name, after phoenix and before rebranding to firefox.
Levitating 1 hours ago [-]
> Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now
I don't think that's the case.
"Thunderbird is part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation."
Thunderbirds sourcecode is literally part of the same mercury codebase as Firefox.
Thunderbird does have a very small team, and I think everyone that uses it should considering donating.
Vinnl 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah it's all a bit complex (just like the US tax code, I suppose). MZLA (which makes Thunderbird) is a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corporation (which makes Firefox) is also a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. In practice, this means that the people running Firefox day-to-day aren't the people running Thunderbird day-to-day, although of course they do talk, and technology choices made in Firefox can and do effect Thunderbird, just like they effect e.g. Zen Browser or Tor Browser.
(Also, someone help a non-native speaker: I think the "effect"s above should be "affect", but for some reason that looked wrong here. Why is that?)
mplanchard 20 minutes ago [-]
For their more common meanings, like in your paragraph, as a verb you want affect, and as a noun, effect. So, when in doubt, use that as a rule of thumb.
However, both have alternative meanings as the other part of speech.
Affect as a noun means emotion or disposition, and is mostly used in psychology. Your psychologist may say you have a depressed affect.
Effect as a verb means to bring about. You might say that a successful protest effected change in society.
As a verb, in addition to “have an impact on,” affect can also mean “to pretend to have,” like “she affected an air of mystery,” although this is less common.
throwaway667555 56 minutes ago [-]
Companies will often state a subsidiary is wholly owned by the ultimate parent regardless of which tier the subsidiary is at. The Thunderbird subsidiary could be under the Firefox subsidiary and the statement would still be true.
wccrawford 51 minutes ago [-]
"Effect" as a verb means to bring about, or to bring it into existence. "Affect" means to have influence on them.
It's definitely wrong in that paragraph.
antisol 56 minutes ago [-]
I agree that it should be "affect". Affect doesn't look wrong to me:
and technology choices made in Firefox can and do affect Thunderbird, just like they effect e.g. Zen Browser or Tor Browser.
I'm no expert on the rules of english, but I think maybe it would be slightly more gramatically correct to say that "choices made in Firefox can and do have an effect on Thunderbird". I would probably have phrased it like that. Maybe that's why it looks wrong to you?
English is a bit of a bastard language IIUC, and so we accept the way you've phrased it too, but in that case it should be "affect".
I hope this helps rather than making things more confusing! ;)
antisol 1 hours ago [-]
Thunderbird has always been mozilla. They split it out into the other company a few years back.
Twirrim 1 hours ago [-]
Likewise. Long time Thunderbird user since the original 1.0 days, for both work and personal use.
There's been a few ups and downs along the way but I've found it generally "just works" and gets out the way, which is exactly what I want in an email client.
I've tried almost every single email client I could find on Linux, and several on Windows (including Pegasus mail, if anyone remembers that), but always come back to Thunderbird.
I've been a regular donator to the project ever since they spun it out to MZLA Technologies Corporation.
squidbeak 37 minutes ago [-]
I'm another appreciative long-term user. There are things about it that piss me off (especially the absence of a comfortable reading mode - with a quarter of an ordinary screen given over to ui and message headers) but it's been dependable over decades.
mrks_hy 2 hours ago [-]
I really like Thunderbird, it's the only truly cross-platform mail app, with K9 also now on Android.
Works perfect, I even migrated my Windows install to Linux just by copying the data folder, absolutely seamless.
Not sure why people are hating on it so much here. Point to an alternative with the same features?
dominicq 42 minutes ago [-]
I can't get it to save emails that I've corresponded with on the Android app. I always have to find specific emails in the email history, and then "Compose message to". If I try to start a new email and start typing the name, or email address, there's no dropdown, no suggestion. Have you ever had this issue on Android?
ACS_Solver 1 hours ago [-]
I've been using Thunderbird for my email for a very long time. Probably since some early 1.0 release.
In these years, I've also had it on Windows and Linux, I've migrated it easily across many OS installs and hardware changes, I've used it with different kinds of email accounts and servers. It's worked with PGP encrypted mail, with SpamAssassin on the server and more.
It's great. It doesn't change much, which is probably a good thing, Firefox lost me as a user at some point. Thunderbird mostly stays the same, adding features occasionally. As I write this, I realize I'm so used to Thunderbird I'm not even sure what other clients are available. Definitely one of the best programs I've used.
copperx 1 hours ago [-]
people point to the rare bug report that deletes absolutely everything in the account. but at this point, I don't even know if it's true.
jorvi 55 minutes ago [-]
I've been hit by that bug, although it only deletes mail AFAIK. There's a separate bug that completely corrupts the mail database on compaction, making Thunderbird lock up including for every future launch.
Its a beautiful open source effort but products that have bugs like that languish for 10-20 years just aren't reliable. I need my mail client to be reliable.
mrks_hy 50 minutes ago [-]
I've been using it to close to 20 years with multiple accounts and it was rock-solid. I wouldn't extrapolate from anecdata, in either direction.
But we should not spread FUD. If you can link to the bug I'd be interested, otherwise it doesn't add much value to claim this.
charcircuit 1 hours ago [-]
Gmail can be used from any modern platform through the web and has dedicated Android and iOS apps too.
dmantis 48 minutes ago [-]
1. web is too slow compared to any decent desktop client. thunderbird navigation/deletion/message opening is basically instant from human perception, web version operations are visible to human eye.
2. doesn't cut trackers
Barbing 1 hours ago [-]
It's bad enough so many of us have to get our emails through them. Adding even more tracking on top of that… No, thank you. I don't want all my scroll positions on all my emails to be logged in their database forever.
mrks_hy 48 minutes ago [-]
It cannot do PGP, by design, just for a very obvious fault. It won't let you use your own domain and web storage. Sorry, no contest.
code-blooded 3 hours ago [-]
Campaigns like this need more info. This page doesn't answer any basic questions.
How much money do you currently get? How much money do you need and how will you use it? Does it even go directly to Thunderbird development or will be used up by Mozilla for other projects?
Still, my point stands that communication around it should be super clear and available on all pages where they collect money. It shouldn't require me to search for it.
zdc1 7 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, there's basically nothing explaining why the need more funding, and what they will do with it. Hosting? Salaries? Admin? You'd hope for a bit more context than this.
> How will my gift be used?
> Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development.
They are not entirely separate from Mozilla. The MZLA Technologies Corporation is a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. They have access to some of Mozilla's common infrastructure, but are otherwise entirely funded by donations. Donations to MZLA only fund Thunderbird and no other products.
garaetjjte 31 minutes ago [-]
Seems fine if you can donate to Thunderbird development. Compared to Firefox, where I don't think it's possible to donate to development at all (only to Mozilla activism side).
bpt3 1 hours ago [-]
They are a wholly owned subsidiary. They're separate from Firefox, not Mozilla.
throw934ork4k 45 minutes ago [-]
Just read the job ads. I will not donate.
> MZLA Technologies Corporation (MZLA) Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion
For the avoidance of doubt, you won't donate to Thunderbird because you disagree with the following policy?
> We do not discriminate on the basis of race [...], religion [...], gender, gender identity, gender expression, color, national origin, pregnancy, ancestry, domestic partner status, disability, sexual orientation, age, genetic predisposition, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, or any other basis covered by applicable laws. Mozilla will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics or any other unlawful behavior, conduct, or purpose.
encom 8 minutes ago [-]
Yes, that is correct. Discrimination is already illegal in hiring. Spelling it out so absurdly verbosely is just virtue signalling. If you're a remote developer, nobody cares about your colour or sex. Except at Mozilla, where people have their pronouns in Bugzilla.
To be clear, I fully support the right to be and feel and think whatever you want, but don't expect me to care about it, and this endless signposting of identity is tiresome.
Hasnep 32 minutes ago [-]
You won't donate because they will try not to discriminate when hiring? It's illegal to discriminate on things like race, sex and gender when hiring, so pretty much every company avoids it.
rambambram 2 hours ago [-]
Just donated. Have been using Thunderbird for years. I once donated to Wikipedia - and they have billions I heard - so might as well donate to another important piece of software for my digital life.
Now that I read the comments I find out Mozilla might have enough money and a CEO taking in millions. Any recommendations for a good email client on Linux? Just as a backup for now...
yorwba 2 hours ago [-]
Mozilla Corporation may have enough money, but they don't develop Thunderbird. If you used the donation form on this page, you didn't donate to Mozilla Corporation, but to the company developing Thunderbird. So all is fine.
EbNar 2 hours ago [-]
I'm just using Evolution. Switched from Thunderbird a few weeks ago. So far, so good.
gostsamo 2 hours ago [-]
Mozilla and Mozla are two different corporations though both under the mozilla foundation.
swiftcoder 3 hours ago [-]
> MZLA Technologies Corporation is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and the home of Thunderbird.
I guess I don't understand why the open-source email client with zero revenue potential is managed by a for-profit subsidiary, nor why that for-profit subsidiary is begging for donations.
Shouldn't this whole thing be managed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation?
input_sh 3 hours ago [-]
I don't see them begging anywhere, I only see someone sharing a link to their donate page.
For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird, as in if you give it money it goes straight into Thunderbird. Many people here pretend to wish to be able to give money directly to Firefox, yet when they can do that for Thunderbird, people here are still finding bullshit reasons not to do so. Pick a lane.
swiftcoder 3 hours ago [-]
> For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird
Right, I get that, but why is it for-profit? Fund raising is hard enough for nonprofits, convincing people to donate their hard-earned cash to a for-profit is on a whole different level.
input_sh 2 hours ago [-]
I'm definitely not involved with any of them to know for sure, but my guess would be that's because non-profits come with a lot more regulatory overhead in comparison to for-profits of a similar scale. Not saying that's bad in any way, but for a team that just wants to build the damn thing, for-profits are absolutely less of a hassle.
account42 37 minutes ago [-]
Sure but if they want people to donate they better be ready to explain their decisions. All that extra overhead is there to ensure that the nonprofit is actually a nonprofit doing what it says it's doing after all.
glenstein 21 minutes ago [-]
My understanding is the for-profit structure was necessary in order to be able to do the search licensing deals finance Firefox.
Vinnl 58 minutes ago [-]
One thing that's important to note (which holds for the Mozilla Corporation too) is that the for-profit thing is a legal status, but the Foundation (an official non-profit) is the only shareholder, i.e. the only entity that "profit" can flow to. So you're not lining some billionaire's pockets.
(Though of course, employees of either entity can be paid whatever, which also holds for every other non-profit.)
2 hours ago [-]
psittacus 3 hours ago [-]
Not that it answers your question, but the move happened in 2020 to "hire more easily, act more swiftly, and pursue ideas that were previously not possible".
This is just organizational structure. "For-profit" doesn't mean "profitable". Also, the organization is "wholly owned" by a non-profit, so if there are profits declared in the form of dividends, those dividends are sent to the non-profit.
Note that many non-profits have exceptionally high-paid executives and "contractors".
Regulatory requirements on non-profit organizations are very high, and those organizations are, in fact, very limited in what they can do and how they receive their money. There are very good reasons for a non-profit to own for-profit entities, and, similarly, for philanthropic organizations to organize as for-profit entities.
9cb14c1ec0 2 hours ago [-]
Please no. The Mozilla Foundation has lost their way. I don't want them messing with my favorite email client.
Loic 3 hours ago [-]
Interestingly, I used Thunderbird for years, it was really the best client for some times on Linux. But as the development stalled, I moved to Gnome Evolution, the nice integration with the general Gnome desktop made the switch less painful (at the start, it was hard, Evolution was not that good). But Evolution improved nicely, less bugs, faster, still well integrated into the desktop and I see no reasons to switch back to another tool.
The only change in my workflow is that now, I am also using in parallel a stupid command line tool "vibe coded" in Python to read my emails. It allows me to quickly check my emails out of VS Code in a Claude Code session, a bit like when I was doing my emails directly in Emacs :-)
tristanj 3 hours ago [-]
Mozilla brings in almost $700 million per year, they have more than enough money to sponsor MZLA/Thunderbird development.
shakna 3 hours ago [-]
Mozilla tried to kill Thunderbird in 2020. They've been talking about not sponsoring it all since 2015.
They might have the money, but they don't really seem to want anything to do with the project.
t0lo 3 hours ago [-]
Mozilla doesn't have the willpower or vision to do anything with anything.
mb_thd 41 minutes ago [-]
Don't be so harsh on them. (\s) They show lots of willpower and some sort of vision when talking about AI in Firefox.
antisol 1 hours ago [-]
Good! I hope they do "kill it off" so that someone who isn't totally incompetent can fork it and take it over.
Vinnl 57 minutes ago [-]
That's basically how you could describe what happened. Those competent people are using Mozilla's infrastructure and trademarks, but otherwise running on donations.
antisol 54 minutes ago [-]
Then how come everything they've done in the last 10 years has been garbage?
reddalo 2 hours ago [-]
Mozilla is so sad. They have a lot of money and they could fund the development of both Firefox and Thunderbird.
Yet, they decide to waste almost $7 million per year to pay a CEO and God knows what else.
Skywalker13 2 hours ago [-]
like all Big Tech
account42 32 minutes ago [-]
Except this "big tech" larper is supposedly fully owned by a nonprofit.
Fervicus 2 hours ago [-]
What do they do with all that money? According to wikipedia, they had about 750 employees. That's a lot of employees for the amount of useful products they have.
smarnach 1 hours ago [-]
How did you come to the conclusion that 750 people is a lot to build a web browser? The Chrome-adjacent teams at Google are about 4,000 people, and that doesn't even include all the people at Google providing infrastructure (e.g. servers, workplace, HR, legal etc.).
Comparing Firefox to Chromium-based browsers doesn't make much sense since these browsers don't develop their own web engine.
criticalfault 40 minutes ago [-]
take the reference of ladybird.
in a couple of years they built the engine from scratch. it's going to soon enter Alpha. how many people from ladybird built that engine? about 10?
all while everyone has said that modern web makes this task impossible
squidbeak 32 minutes ago [-]
> it's going to soon enter Alpha
Perhaps other browser makers want to move faster than Ladybird.
criticalfault 22 minutes ago [-]
that's fine.
point is that Mozilla is wasting money and having 4000 people working on chrome may not be the correct benchmark.
glenstein 19 minutes ago [-]
Wait why is that fine? The whole point was that ladybird is yet to enter alpha which is the very reason why it's not the correct benchmark. And you said the Chrome comparison isn't the correct one but... didn't follow it up with an actual reason.
ekianjo 1 hours ago [-]
They need a lot of money to pay their useless execs, so 700 million must be barely enough to keep things running
alsetmusic 2 hours ago [-]
Donated. I don't even use it, but we needed it for opening email archives from clients at my old employer. We need as many options as possible.
mhitza 3 hours ago [-]
Wasn't Thunderbird Pro the avenue for extra project financing?
Why does it take so long to launch an email service?
teekert 3 hours ago [-]
Was going to say it's here, but it's not indeed, you can join the waitlist: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/
vntok 1 hours ago [-]
To be fair, "Give for TB awareness" has a nice ring to it...
The other day I cam to my computer with Thunderbird showing me a full page screen instead of my email list that I had open before. Not going to donate to projects that disrespect users like that - my computer is not your advertising space even if you consider your ads "helpful information".
Hasnep 30 minutes ago [-]
I'm pretty sure they show it something like once a year, and it takes two seconds to close it, if you can't spare two seconds of your life every year for something you get for free then you were never going to donate anything.
squigz 23 minutes ago [-]
I think it's more disrespectful to judge so harshly a company - that puts out wonderful, free, open source software - asking for donations 1 or 2 times a year with a message that is easy to close.
isodev 2 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't mind donating if they separate it from Mozilla and move it to Europe.
Hosted Securely in Germany
Your emails are protected by strict EU privacy laws and hosted on infrastructure you can trust. With servers located in Germany, Thundermail prioritizes your privacy while ensuring reliable, fast delivery worldwide.
ahartmetz 13 minutes ago [-]
I don't see how it's different from Amazon or Microsoft datacenters in the EU, which are not safe from the US government. As long as the US parent company can somehow get at the data, it is obligated to do so when a US agency asks for it.
niels8472 17 minutes ago [-]
Looks like it's still owned by Mozilla/MZLA and thus subject to US jurisdiction.
foofloobar 1 hours ago [-]
How much money goes into the pocket of the Mozilla CEO? How much is used to actually pay the people and to cover infrastructure costs?
Hasnep 27 minutes ago [-]
1. $0.
2. Probably close to 100%.
muhehe 1 hours ago [-]
Thunderbird will provider their PRO services using stalw.art as email backend. I was considering using it too to replace really old mail system in our company. It looked like modern stack using jmap, but it seems thunderbird actually does not support jmap? Or is it only in their PRO extension? Does it mean I cannot use this unless it is with their services? I'm confused.
Of course there is still IMAP, but I hoped for better.
sylens 54 minutes ago [-]
Curiously, JMAP is on the roadmap for the iOS client, but I don't see it in the desktop client roadmap https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap. But seeing as how it will power their Thundermail service, I would assume all clients would need the support
TekMol 2 hours ago [-]
I wish there was a system that lets users put up a donation that is released once a specific bug is fixed or a specific feature is implemented.
Wouldn't that be cool? The company would have a list of tasks with a dollar amount next to it.
I for one have been dabbling with a bug in ThunderBird for days now that drives me mad:
I recently created a folder in Thunderbird and called it "archive". No way would I have expected that this will lead me to a bug and will take hours out of my day: There seems to be no way to get rid of this folder anymore.
Things I have tried:
"Keep message archives in" in "Copies and Folders" is disabled. I tried temporarily enabling it, setting it to some other dir and disabling it again, that did not help.
I have disabled it in "subscribe".
I cannot rename it.
There is no "archive" folder in the web interface of my email provider, so if it Thunderbird somehow created it on the server, there seems to be no way to see, let alone delete it again in the web interface.
I tried deleting archive.msf on disk. That makes the folder disappear after the next start, but it is recreated after about a second.
I deleted folderTree.json and folderCache.json, that did not help.
j-bos 2 hours ago [-]
You can do that. It's called a restricted donation. If you make a donation with a cover letter or a check memoizing a specific purpose and the nonprofit accepts it, then by law they're legally obligated to follow through and use that money for that purpose. With bugs it's probably easier because you can just write the bug ID on the check.
cge 1 hours ago [-]
MZLA Technologies, the organization that these donations go to, is not a non-profit.
antisol 1 hours ago [-]
There are also a couple of bug bounty websites out there for exactly this kind of thing: you and others throw some money into the pot for fixing a given bug or implementing some feature, and coders can claim that bounty once they've written the code.
I've seen a few of these sites over the years but I can't remember the name of any RN. Search engines are your friend.
plmpsu 3 hours ago [-]
I wish I could use Thunderbird at work now that it has Exchange support . Unfortunately we're mandated to use Microsoft Outlook. Outlook feels like it has completely been forgotten by Microsoft. I don't recall the last time they updated anything meaningful in the product (at least on macOS), it's quite a mess of a product. Wishing Thunderbird all the best it's the competition we need.
teekert 3 hours ago [-]
You know what is nice? If you have clients that get automatically switched to "the new Outlook" and loose all imap connections (and they don't work anymore, period).
Took me so long to learn that the fix was to switch back to the old Outlook.
josephg 3 hours ago [-]
IMAP works in outlook. Its just horrible to set up and half broken. Click "Add account". Then type in your email address, click "Choose provider", select IMAP, then click "Sync directly with IMAP" (dark pattern hidden button). If you don't click that last button, outlook uploads your IMAP email credentials to their own MS Cloud instance, and that proxies all your emails via microsoft's cloud servers. Do they read your email messages for advertising? Nobody knows!
In my testing, the local IMAP client implementation quite frequently launches a DoS attack against your IMAP server. It'll send the same query requesting new mail messages in a tight loop, limited by the round-trip latency. But luckily, almost nobody uses IMAP via outlook because its so difficult to set up.
josephg 3 hours ago [-]
There's also two different applications which are both "Outlook for Mac".
If you go into the "Outlook" menu in the app, there's a "Legacy Outlook" button, which relaunches outlook using a completely different binary. The two outlook implementations have different bugs and all sorts of different behaviour.
Outlook For Mac is free but "legacy outlook" requires a MS365 subscription for some reason.
Outlook is also not to be confused with Microsoft's "Web Outlook" client, available at outlook.live.com. It all seems totally insane.
cutler 3 hours ago [-]
< It all seems totally insane.
This is Microsoft we're talking about, right?
latexr 3 hours ago [-]
If you press the browser’s back button on the donation page, they send you to a page pestering you for your email address so they can send you a reminder to donate later. Talk about a dark pattern.
Mozilla has really gone off the rails. An organisation who claims to work on behalf of the user and who makes a web browser, actively hijacking the user experience to peddle for a few dollars?
Why the heck is Thunderbird “fully funded by financial contributions from [their] users”? Where do the billions of dollars from Google go? All the stupid doomed side projects which no one asked for nor wants and are abandoned after one year?
amiga386 2 hours ago [-]
> Where do the billions of dollars from Google go?
The Mozilla Corporation then picks and chooses what it finances within the Mozilla Foundation. Their financial statements don't break down how they spend on software development within the Foundation, it only lists out employee salaries, specific directors' salaries and grants to outsiders... but it would seem Thunderbird doesn't get much if they're out begging.
- $66,396,000 from paid services (e.g Pocket, VPN) and advertisers
- $15,782,000 from donations
And it spent:
- $290,448,000 on programmer salaries
- $163,516,000 on manager salaries
- $36,358,000 on servers, cloud, etc.
- $20,258,000 on consultants (e.g. branding consultants)
- $9,573,000 on travel
- $2,192,000 on grants and fellowships
So overall, it didn't spent that much on the stupid doomed side projects! It spent a lot more on flying managers and marketing consultants to nice soirees.
But the real question, not answered by this financial report, is how much programming labour was spent on Thunderbird, versus other Mozilla projects?
CamouflagedKiwi 1 hours ago [-]
My assumption would be that it's very little, given that Thunderbird was separated out of the Mozilla Corporation to MOZLA (or whatever it's called).
On the bright side, that actually makes me a bit keener about donating to it; donating to the Mozilla Corporation seems entirely pointless given donations make up ~2.5% of their income, and less than 10% of what they spend just on manager salaries, whereas giving it to Thunderbird might actually have a positive impact.
amiga386 22 minutes ago [-]
I'm not sure which part it is in their accounts, but their Form 990 says:
> MZLA TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION share of total income: $10,760,074
So they don't break it down, but around 10 million went to the corporation that runs Thunderbird and other projects (versus 658 million to the one that runs the browser)
user3939382 2 hours ago [-]
LibreWolf should have no reason to exist. It does because Mozilla’s values are largely marketing.
ksk23 2 hours ago [-]
Thought the same..
drekipus 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's a dark pattern. Just a common marketing thing. Not "everything that annoys me" is a dark pattern.
account42 21 minutes ago [-]
Most "common marketing things" are dark patterns. Being common does not make it right and we expect better than common for people who want our donations.
addandsubtract 1 hours ago [-]
Stealing the function of the back button is a dark pattern.
nottorp 2 hours ago [-]
Is that a Stripe screen? Set up american style to reduce friction, not supporting 3d secure, which means european credit cards will deny by default?
Heh. No it doesn't because they require their users to treat it manually and as a consequence a lot of americans don't.
Example 1 that is definitely going through Stripe: Ars Technica.
Example 2 that I don't know what is going through: Asimov's Magazine.
In the race for no friction, they add friction for EU users.
mtmail 2 hours ago [-]
Fineprint says it's Stripe. My (european) credit card worked fine.
ano-ther 2 hours ago [-]
As a lot of people in this thread advise against Thunderbird, what do you recommend instead (preferably for Windows as I am stuck on that)?
mrks_hy 2 hours ago [-]
I think they are just hating on Mozilla out of pure principles, but without any alternative.
PunchyHamster 42 minutes ago [-]
Thunderbird of now is more annoying and less convenient to use than when I last time used it in 2010's, before I moved to claws-mail.
And only reason using it now is cos of MS fucked up oauth2 method that is PITA to setup for any other OSS client as it requires the app to be added to their catalog and only thunderbird was big enough to get that
So I can understand the annoyance
hk__2 2 hours ago [-]
> I think they are just hating on Mozilla out of pure principles
Please don’t assume bad faith when the reality is that you don’t know.
Skywalker13 2 hours ago [-]
Outlook Express
[]->
Hasnep 19 minutes ago [-]
There's a bunch of misinformation in the comments here, so I'll just add that I started using Thunderbird again around the time they became independent (ish) of Mozilla and I've really enjoyed it, it's fast, supports all my email accounts and the Android app is good too.
bulbar 3 hours ago [-]
I have actually bought a lifetime license for em Client.
Thunderbird had consistently (Windows / Linux) a bad performance for me and feature and UX wise it has always only been okay for me.
Still important that a few FOSS solutions for email exist, though.
OccamsMirror 3 hours ago [-]
em Client has no Linux version though?
reddalo 2 hours ago [-]
Not having a Linux version in 2026 is ridiculous.
elAhmo 3 hours ago [-]
Mozilla is such a weird company, asking users to donate and keep one of their projects alive, while dumping billions in useless initiatives is really dishonest.
I used TB happily for years on Mac OS but its font rendering on Linux was one of the main reasons I never switched.
anthk 55 minutes ago [-]
Enable Usenet support in the Android build...
isaachinman 3 hours ago [-]
Sorry, isn't Thunderbird meant to be "true FOSS" and essentially feature complete?
Noaidi 2 hours ago [-]
I miss the days we needed Thunderbird for email...such an innocent time.
bravetraveler 3 hours ago [-]
Anyone using Thunderbird was forced to see this, not sure we (or the well-funded corp) need another round.
account42 19 minutes ago [-]
Yes, which has ensured I never donate to them again. It's my computer not MZLA's billboard.
shaky-carrousel 3 hours ago [-]
By donating to MZLA Technologies Corporation? Then I guess I'll switch to KMail or Evolution.
0x000042 3 hours ago [-]
How is KMail and Evolution at this point? I have not tried them in like 10 years. Are they actively maintained and a real alternative for serious email use?
teekert 3 hours ago [-]
Both are ok last time I tried (last year?) but Geary is default on Gnome distro's now I think [0]. Geary is much more minimal though.
I myself am pretty spoiled by Protonmail I think, really enjoying that.
I use Thunderbird on both Linux/Android as my sole client for personal email. I'm mostly pretty happy with it, aside from search. My use case is mostly receiving email rather than sending email however. I would be much more amenable to donating if I knew that my donation would be going to support Thunderbird specifically and not rolled up into the parent MZLA Technologies Corporation, but I understand that's usually impractical.
antisol 1 hours ago [-]
DO NOT donate to Thunderbird. Let it "die". As with all of Mozilla's software, that would be the best outcome - if it does, someone who isn't totally incompetent might fork it and actually improve it.
Literally every change that's been made to thunderbird in the last 10+ years has made it worse. Mozilla are doggedly using the same philosophy as they are with firefox: "in what new and exciting ways can we make it more shit?".
There are a bunch of things that I used to do in thunderbird with no problem on much less powerful machines that I can't do today.
For example, since they decided to rewrite their perfectly-functional calendar parsing in a trash language, it now eats 100% of my CPU for ~30mins at a time trying to parse my decades-long, many-many-thousands-of-entries calendar. Then when it finishes it notices that it's been 30 mins since it synchronised my calendar, so it syncs and starts parsing all over again! This effectively locks up the whole of thunderbird, making it totally unusable. This issue has persisted for years. The solution I came up with is "stop using thunderbird for my calendar".
There's a similar fun bug which means it won't sync my contacts anymore either. A feature that I had by about 2010 which my nokia phone could manage, modern thunderbird cannot do.
If you'd like another 20 examples of how it's worse today than it was 10 years ago, just ask, and I'll write up a hundred thousand words or so of vitriol.
It's extremely likely that next time I upgrade my distro I'll be shopping for a new email client. Currently I have thunderbird marked as held so that it doesn't upgrade. When I upgrade my distro there will be a new version of thunderbird, and I'd estimate about a 90% chance that that's when I'll make my exit, after ~20 years or so.
It's sad. Thunderbird used to be a great piece of software.
Don't give mozilla your money.
BoredPositron 2 hours ago [-]
I really think Mozilla has run it's course. Just die already so there is room for something new.
sergolala 3 hours ago [-]
Made an account just to say that I will not support the bloated mess that is Thunderbird that pushes on you a new way to configure it, a new layout and new workflows with every major update, makes it difficult to set up text-only mail and messes up line breaks every so often with no way to properly configure it, which should be developed by Mozilla, which is flush with money but rather spends it on theming their software and executive salaries.
I switched away from Thunderbird about a year ago and couldn't be happier I have made the change.
Gud 21 minutes ago [-]
This is downvoted but needs to be said.
Thunderbird was an amazing 90's style piece of software that has unfortunately been been changed into a more "modern" look, with excessive white space and power-user hostile work flows.
It was near perfect, just needed better search, pretty much.
ThePowerOfFuet 3 hours ago [-]
What do you use now?
Rendered at 12:56:17 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
As for the donations, Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now, so I don't think much about specific org structure and will gladly donate.
Maybe on paper there're dozens of alternatives, but when I consider my specific requirements, I haven't found anything better, YMMV.
"How will my gift be used?"
"Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development."
Well that tells me exactly nothing. This might not be as big an issue if they were separate from Mozilla. To be concrete, and focusing only on the development of Firefox, there's now an AI chatbot in the sidebar. I think that's a good addition. However, when the only options are proprietary services, it's hard for me to see the point of Firefox. It would be easier to get out my credit card for Thunderbird if I didn't have those thoughts in the back of my mind. As it stands, my donation might be going to fund the Mozilla CEO's salary.
If you're asking for donations and holding your cap out, the implication is that every penny will go toward development.
Mozilla should either just make it a product that you have to pay for, or sub to, or keep donations cleanly separated.
Written this way, it sounds like "donate or we'll have to make you pay for it"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#Name_changes
I don't think that's the case.
"Thunderbird is part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation."
Thunderbirds sourcecode is literally part of the same mercury codebase as Firefox.
Thunderbird does have a very small team, and I think everyone that uses it should considering donating.
(Also, someone help a non-native speaker: I think the "effect"s above should be "affect", but for some reason that looked wrong here. Why is that?)
However, both have alternative meanings as the other part of speech.
Affect as a noun means emotion or disposition, and is mostly used in psychology. Your psychologist may say you have a depressed affect.
Effect as a verb means to bring about. You might say that a successful protest effected change in society.
As a verb, in addition to “have an impact on,” affect can also mean “to pretend to have,” like “she affected an air of mystery,” although this is less common.
It's definitely wrong in that paragraph.
English is a bit of a bastard language IIUC, and so we accept the way you've phrased it too, but in that case it should be "affect".
I hope this helps rather than making things more confusing! ;)
There's been a few ups and downs along the way but I've found it generally "just works" and gets out the way, which is exactly what I want in an email client.
I've tried almost every single email client I could find on Linux, and several on Windows (including Pegasus mail, if anyone remembers that), but always come back to Thunderbird.
I've been a regular donator to the project ever since they spun it out to MZLA Technologies Corporation.
Works perfect, I even migrated my Windows install to Linux just by copying the data folder, absolutely seamless.
Not sure why people are hating on it so much here. Point to an alternative with the same features?
In these years, I've also had it on Windows and Linux, I've migrated it easily across many OS installs and hardware changes, I've used it with different kinds of email accounts and servers. It's worked with PGP encrypted mail, with SpamAssassin on the server and more.
It's great. It doesn't change much, which is probably a good thing, Firefox lost me as a user at some point. Thunderbird mostly stays the same, adding features occasionally. As I write this, I realize I'm so used to Thunderbird I'm not even sure what other clients are available. Definitely one of the best programs I've used.
Its a beautiful open source effort but products that have bugs like that languish for 10-20 years just aren't reliable. I need my mail client to be reliable.
But we should not spread FUD. If you can link to the bug I'd be interested, otherwise it doesn't add much value to claim this.
2. doesn't cut trackers
How much money do you currently get? How much money do you need and how will you use it? Does it even go directly to Thunderbird development or will be used up by Mozilla for other projects?
Edit: I found some info here: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/
Still, my point stands that communication around it should be super clear and available on all pages where they collect money. It shouldn't require me to search for it.
> How will my gift be used?
> Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development.
* https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
> MZLA Technologies Corporation (MZLA) Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/careers/position/gh/7623871/
> We do not discriminate on the basis of race [...], religion [...], gender, gender identity, gender expression, color, national origin, pregnancy, ancestry, domestic partner status, disability, sexual orientation, age, genetic predisposition, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, or any other basis covered by applicable laws. Mozilla will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics or any other unlawful behavior, conduct, or purpose.
To be clear, I fully support the right to be and feel and think whatever you want, but don't expect me to care about it, and this endless signposting of identity is tiresome.
Now that I read the comments I find out Mozilla might have enough money and a CEO taking in millions. Any recommendations for a good email client on Linux? Just as a backup for now...
I guess I don't understand why the open-source email client with zero revenue potential is managed by a for-profit subsidiary, nor why that for-profit subsidiary is begging for donations.
Shouldn't this whole thing be managed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation?
For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird, as in if you give it money it goes straight into Thunderbird. Many people here pretend to wish to be able to give money directly to Firefox, yet when they can do that for Thunderbird, people here are still finding bullshit reasons not to do so. Pick a lane.
Right, I get that, but why is it for-profit? Fund raising is hard enough for nonprofits, convincing people to donate their hard-earned cash to a for-profit is on a whole different level.
(Though of course, employees of either entity can be paid whatever, which also holds for every other non-profit.)
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
Note that many non-profits have exceptionally high-paid executives and "contractors".
Regulatory requirements on non-profit organizations are very high, and those organizations are, in fact, very limited in what they can do and how they receive their money. There are very good reasons for a non-profit to own for-profit entities, and, similarly, for philanthropic organizations to organize as for-profit entities.
The only change in my workflow is that now, I am also using in parallel a stupid command line tool "vibe coded" in Python to read my emails. It allows me to quickly check my emails out of VS Code in a Claude Code session, a bit like when I was doing my emails directly in Emacs :-)
They might have the money, but they don't really seem to want anything to do with the project.
Yet, they decide to waste almost $7 million per year to pay a CEO and God knows what else.
Comparing Firefox to Chromium-based browsers doesn't make much sense since these browsers don't develop their own web engine.
in a couple of years they built the engine from scratch. it's going to soon enter Alpha. how many people from ladybird built that engine? about 10?
all while everyone has said that modern web makes this task impossible
Perhaps other browser makers want to move faster than Ladybird.
point is that Mozilla is wasting money and having 4000 people working on chrome may not be the correct benchmark.
Of course there is still IMAP, but I hoped for better.
Wouldn't that be cool? The company would have a list of tasks with a dollar amount next to it.
I for one have been dabbling with a bug in ThunderBird for days now that drives me mad:
I recently created a folder in Thunderbird and called it "archive". No way would I have expected that this will lead me to a bug and will take hours out of my day: There seems to be no way to get rid of this folder anymore.
Things I have tried:
"Keep message archives in" in "Copies and Folders" is disabled. I tried temporarily enabling it, setting it to some other dir and disabling it again, that did not help.
I have disabled it in "subscribe".
I cannot rename it.
There is no "archive" folder in the web interface of my email provider, so if it Thunderbird somehow created it on the server, there seems to be no way to see, let alone delete it again in the web interface.
I tried deleting archive.msf on disk. That makes the folder disappear after the next start, but it is recreated after about a second.
I deleted folderTree.json and folderCache.json, that did not help.
I've seen a few of these sites over the years but I can't remember the name of any RN. Search engines are your friend.
Took me so long to learn that the fix was to switch back to the old Outlook.
In my testing, the local IMAP client implementation quite frequently launches a DoS attack against your IMAP server. It'll send the same query requesting new mail messages in a tight loop, limited by the round-trip latency. But luckily, almost nobody uses IMAP via outlook because its so difficult to set up.
If you go into the "Outlook" menu in the app, there's a "Legacy Outlook" button, which relaunches outlook using a completely different binary. The two outlook implementations have different bugs and all sorts of different behaviour.
Outlook For Mac is free but "legacy outlook" requires a MS365 subscription for some reason.
Outlook is also not to be confused with Microsoft's "Web Outlook" client, available at outlook.live.com. It all seems totally insane.
This is Microsoft we're talking about, right?
Mozilla has really gone off the rails. An organisation who claims to work on behalf of the user and who makes a web browser, actively hijacking the user experience to peddle for a few dollars?
Why the heck is Thunderbird “fully funded by financial contributions from [their] users”? Where do the billions of dollars from Google go? All the stupid doomed side projects which no one asked for nor wants and are abandoned after one year?
They go to the Mozilla Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
The Mozilla Corporation then picks and chooses what it finances within the Mozilla Foundation. Their financial statements don't break down how they spend on software development within the Foundation, it only lists out employee salaries, specific directors' salaries and grants to outsiders... but it would seem Thunderbird doesn't get much if they're out begging.
https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...
So, as an example, in 2024, it got:
- $498,218,000 from royalties (e.g. Google)
- $66,396,000 from paid services (e.g Pocket, VPN) and advertisers
- $15,782,000 from donations
And it spent:
- $290,448,000 on programmer salaries
- $163,516,000 on manager salaries
- $36,358,000 on servers, cloud, etc.
- $20,258,000 on consultants (e.g. branding consultants)
- $9,573,000 on travel
- $2,192,000 on grants and fellowships
So overall, it didn't spent that much on the stupid doomed side projects! It spent a lot more on flying managers and marketing consultants to nice soirees.
But the real question, not answered by this financial report, is how much programming labour was spent on Thunderbird, versus other Mozilla projects?
On the bright side, that actually makes me a bit keener about donating to it; donating to the Mozilla Corporation seems entirely pointless given donations make up ~2.5% of their income, and less than 10% of what they spend just on manager salaries, whereas giving it to Thunderbird might actually have a positive impact.
https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...
> MZLA TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION share of total income: $10,760,074
So they don't break it down, but around 10 million went to the corporation that runs Thunderbird and other projects (versus 658 million to the one that runs the browser)
Example 1 that is definitely going through Stripe: Ars Technica.
Example 2 that I don't know what is going through: Asimov's Magazine.
In the race for no friction, they add friction for EU users.
And only reason using it now is cos of MS fucked up oauth2 method that is PITA to setup for any other OSS client as it requires the app to be added to their catalog and only thunderbird was big enough to get that
So I can understand the annoyance
Please don’t assume bad faith when the reality is that you don’t know.
[]->
Thunderbird had consistently (Windows / Linux) a bad performance for me and feature and UX wise it has always only been okay for me.
Still important that a few FOSS solutions for email exist, though.
I myself am pretty spoiled by Protonmail I think, really enjoying that.
[0] https://github.com/GNOME/geary
Literally every change that's been made to thunderbird in the last 10+ years has made it worse. Mozilla are doggedly using the same philosophy as they are with firefox: "in what new and exciting ways can we make it more shit?".
There are a bunch of things that I used to do in thunderbird with no problem on much less powerful machines that I can't do today.
For example, since they decided to rewrite their perfectly-functional calendar parsing in a trash language, it now eats 100% of my CPU for ~30mins at a time trying to parse my decades-long, many-many-thousands-of-entries calendar. Then when it finishes it notices that it's been 30 mins since it synchronised my calendar, so it syncs and starts parsing all over again! This effectively locks up the whole of thunderbird, making it totally unusable. This issue has persisted for years. The solution I came up with is "stop using thunderbird for my calendar".
There's a similar fun bug which means it won't sync my contacts anymore either. A feature that I had by about 2010 which my nokia phone could manage, modern thunderbird cannot do.
If you'd like another 20 examples of how it's worse today than it was 10 years ago, just ask, and I'll write up a hundred thousand words or so of vitriol.
It's extremely likely that next time I upgrade my distro I'll be shopping for a new email client. Currently I have thunderbird marked as held so that it doesn't upgrade. When I upgrade my distro there will be a new version of thunderbird, and I'd estimate about a 90% chance that that's when I'll make my exit, after ~20 years or so.
It's sad. Thunderbird used to be a great piece of software.
Don't give mozilla your money.
I switched away from Thunderbird about a year ago and couldn't be happier I have made the change.
It was near perfect, just needed better search, pretty much.