Thunderbird/Proposal: New Release and Governance Model: Difference between revisions

<p>Mozilla is focusing a lot of its efforts towards important web and mobile projects, while Thunderbird remains a pure desktop only email client. We have come to the conclusion that continued innovation on Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla and that the most critical needs for the product are on-going security and stability. In fact, it is quite possible that Thunderbird is already pretty much what its users want and there is not a high demand for innovation in this field. <br/><br/>

However, we do recognize that there is a very large number of users (more than 20 million) who use Thunderbird and rely on it on a daily basis, sometimes for the most mission critical tasks. Furthermore, Thunderbird is one of the very few truly free and open source multi-platform email application available today and we want to defend these values.<br/><br/>

In order to manage these two perspectives, we are proposing to adapt the Thunderbird release and governance model in a way that allows both ongoing security and stability maintenance as well as community driven innovations for the product. We are opening this plan for discussion to individuals and organizations interested in maintaining and advancing Thunderbird in the future. We are looking for your feedback, comments and suggestions to refine and adapt the plan in the best possible way.<br/><br/>

<h1>Proposal highlights</h1>

<h2>Keep the existing two Thunderbird editions, based on the same ESR regime</h2>

<br/>There are currently two editions of Thunderbird: 'Thunderbird' and 'Thunderbird ESR'. Only 'Thunderbird' is affected by the change:<br/><br/>

-  A new release of Thunderbird ESR will be available on November 20th, 2012. As defined in the Thunderbird ESR plan (http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/organizations/faq/),  it will inherit the then-current Thunderbird feature-set. This release will be updated every six weeks, for the duration of the ESR cycle to ensure the best possible security and stability for organizations.<br/><br/>

-  At the same time, Thunderbird will be released with the same feature set as Thunderbird ESR and will be updated every six-weeks for security and stability. However, and contrary to Thunderbird ESR, Thunderbird feature set might evolve over time and solely based on the availability of community contributions.<br/><br/>

<br/>- Thunderbird modules owners (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules) will remain in charge of their module and will allow community contributions innovation on their own merits. Module ownership is open to any contributor and can evolve over time.<br/>

<br/>- A Release Drivers team will produce the Thunderbird updates every six weeks and work with module owners on the planning and integration of the community contributed innovations.<br/><br/>

- Mozilla will continue to provide paid staff, logistics and infrastructure for the release drivers team to produce updates and new releases with the same level of quality than today. Support will continue to be provided by the Thunderbird community and Mozilla will continue to provide the required infrastructure.<br/>

<br/>We are looking forward to getting your questions and comments on this plan. We would like to refine it throughout the summer so we can discuss the final details at the beginning of September 2012. If you want to be involved in this discussion, please use the tb-planning mailing list (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/tb-planning) as a discussion forum.<br/>