Mozilla Thunderbird was originally launched as Minotaur, shortly after Phoenix (the original name for Mozilla Firefox); the project failed to gain momentum. With the success of the Mozilla Firefox, however, demand increased for a mail client to go with it, and the work on Minotaur was revived under the new name of Thunderbird, and migrated to the new toolkit developed by the Firefox team.
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Early beginnings: A simple email and news client
Significant work on Thunderbird restarted with the announcement that from version 1.5 onwards, the main Mozilla suite would be designed around separate applications using this new toolkit. This contrasted with the previous all-in-one approach, hopefully leading to more efficient and maintainable code, as well as allowing users to mix and match the Mozilla applications with alternatives.
The original Thunderbird logo was just a modified Firebird logo, with a simple shifting of hue value from red to blue. In 2004, together with the change of Firefox's visual identity by Jon Hicks, a more professional logo that is currently in use was introduced.
Release history
Color chart
Current supported releases
Current test releases
Development history
On December 23, 2004, the Project Lightning was announced for tightly integrating calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird. Lightning is just a project name, not a product name. Lightning 0.1 was released on March 14, 2006. The current version is 2.6, as at Thunderbird 24.01 release.
On October 11, 2006, Qualcomm and the Mozilla Foundation announced that "future versions of Eudora will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird email program." The project is code-named Penelope. An unofficial Eudora/Penelope forum is accessible via web or newsreader.
On July 26, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced that Thunderbird would be developed by an independent organization, because the Mozilla Corporation (the for profit portion of Mozilla) is focusing on Mozilla Firefox development. This change was made in order to stimulate development in Thunderbird, which was being neglected during the Mozilla focus on Firefox.
On September 17, 2007, the Mozilla Foundation announced the funding of a new internet communications initiative with Dr. David Ascher of ActiveState. The purpose of this initiative is "to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird product, code and brand".
On February 19, 2008, Mozilla Messaging started operations as a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation responsible for the development of email and similar communications. Its initial focus was on the next major version, Thunderbird 3.0, which was released on December 8, 2009.
On July 6, 2012, the Mozilla Foundation announced that while they will no longer be focused on innovations for Thunderbird, they would provide support until the second half of 2013. In addition, future Thunderbird development will be transitioned to a community-driven model.