Mozilla spins off Thunderbird group

Separate Thunderbird team will encourage development on the messaging platform

Mozilla has today set up a subsidiary company, called Mozilla Messaging, that will focus on developing email and messaging solutions.

Opening for business today Mozilla Messaging will concentrate its efforts on the free, open source Thunderbird email client, specifically version 3.

The group launches with a small developer team, and was announced by chief executive David Ascher thus, "We're excited to renew the focus of our open source community on the future of Thunderbird. Everyone of us is committed to building a great email product that people will love to use and that serves as the foundation for choice in a critical area of internet software."

The group is hoping to encourage other parties to participate in the further development of its solutions, according to Ascher. In a blog post he wrote, "We know we can't do it alone, and we're not even going to try… We see our primary role as that of facilitating collaborative approaches to problem solving and incremental progress, through a combination of leadership and facilitation work. "

Ascher added that the group would be adding key features to the email client, including: integrated calendaring, better search, easier configuration, and a number of interface improvements.