Is TB still developed or just maintained?

[bawldiggle]

We are looking for an email client that can handle high volume of emails.
- I detest email services (having tried a couple) they are not very practical for us.
- We want to be able to create and handle downloaded emails without being web connected.

One email client (I found) struggles with 500 emails and the developer recommends a max of 50 in the Inbox
- totally inadequate for our needs.

A lot of blogs and 5 best/10 best type web pages state "Thunderbird is no longer developed."
- one site implied "security patches only"

The "Builds" sub-forum seems to imply TB is still actively being developed
- over 10 years ago TB did go into neglect but I am wondering whether TB is still breathing

Hope I haven't offended you by asking such a question ?

Thank you

[rsx11m]

No problem, there has been a lot of confusion. The short answer is that Mozilla as a company dropped Thunderbird as a formal "product" and released it to the community for further development (having said that, many of the Thunderbird developers have never been Mozilla employees to start with). Something similar happened with the old Mozilla Application Suite when Firefox and Thunderbird replaced it as a Mozilla-developed application, which has since been successfully continued as the SeaMonkey project.

All of these applications share a common "core" code, both for the browser and the mail/news components. The commitment from the Mozilla side is to provide for security and stability fixes of that code. Feature development and improvements are left to the respective communities.

Since Firefox has a fairly fast pace in making changes to that common core, Thunderbird decided to issue new major releases every 42 weeks only, with security and stability fixes every 6 weeks. Hence the numbering, starting with 17.x, then 24.x, followed by 31.x, and now 38.x. Only with those new major releases new features are introduced. The release notes highlight major changes between 31.x and 38.x, along with a complete list of 591 Thunderbird and Mail/News Core changes (which include bug fixes and new features).

So yes, while both Thunderbird and SeaMonkey are occasionally struggling and are limited by resources, overall both projects are active and definitely "still breathing."

Also see the FAQ in viewtopic.php?f=39&t=366405

[LoudNoise]

Also note that while improvements are happening that are going at a slower rate. Thunderbird is very stable which is a good thing for an email client.

In the many years I have used Thunderbird I haven't had a problem. At work, we rarely have a problem and do have a large volume of email everyday.

[wsmwk]

Also note that while improvements are happening that are going at a slower rate. Thunderbird is very stable which is a good thing for an email client.

OTOH, it can also be argued that bug fixing is very strong, at an increasing rate

[LoudNoise]

I am talking about development. Bug fixes aren't much of an issue with me since I never ran into one. I am assuming that they get fixed before the current version arrives.

[rsx11m]

I am assuming that they get fixed before the current version arrives.

That's overly optimistic...

[LoudNoise]

Not if you are not having any problems The only issue I have is one dealer who always requests a return receipt. When I do, I always get a message box saying "You should not be seeing this." Every other return receipt works. Since I cannot give steps to reproduce I simply ignore the request.