So couldn't they have avoided all this by saying it's going into "maintenance mode" or something? Software development history is full of packages that have fallen into bugfix-only status. Sheesh, what a lot of drama.
Note that the email was intended as an internal (and confidential) heads-up to Mozilla contributors, not as a press release. And I'm not sure how "ongoing security and stability maintenance" is harder to understand than "maintenance mode."
Sure, and I agree, but it was buried in a whole bunch of really bad Business Writing(tm):
However, Thunderbird is one of the very few truly free and open source multi-platform email applications available today and we want to defend these values. We’re not “stopping” Thunderbird, but proposing we adapt the Thunderbird release and governance model in a way that allows both ongoing security and stability maintenance, as well as community-driven innovation and development for the product. This will mean an eventual shift in how we staff Thunderbird at Mozilla Corporation – we are still working out details, but some people will likely end up on other Mozilla projects.
That sounds reasonable to me as an internal email. Basically, they're saying that Mozilla is going to stop active feature development and assume a role as a corporate BFDL (hence "community-driven innovation", i.e., "we may merge new stuff sometimes, but will mostly likely not be writing it"), and expect new people on your product's team soon.
>I'm not sure what you're giving them a pass for here, why wouldn't an internal email be more clear?
The mail seemed entirely clear to me. I think it was just not written in language suitable to non-technical people. I believe most people involved with OSS would recognize this shift into a community maintainer / BFDL as typical and non-threatening.
A "tech journalist" misinterpreted the letter as meaningless corpo-speak since he didn't understand the context or the real-life relevance of its content, and that's what sparked this whole thing about Thunderbird becoming dead. I don't believe it was meant to get spread in that way even if the execs thought some leakage would occur.
This doesn't mean those developers won't contribute to Thunderbird in their own free time as a hobby project. It also doesn't mean that an outsider interested in the project can't see an opportunity to pick up the torch.
Thunderbird is a very widely used piece of software without many adequate competitors and I think there will be plenty of people interested in tinkering with its code for a long time to come.
