Ryan Sipes, Director of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation overseeing the development of the mail client Thunderbird, recently submitted plans to introduce new services to enhance the functionality of Thunderbird. Thunderbird has been losing users steadily as it remains solely a client solution, while users are increasingly turning to ecosystems like Gmail and Office365 which offer both email services and additional features.
Gmail and Office365 are tied to specific manufacturers (Vendor Lock) and often face compatibility issues when interacting with other client applications or trying to integrate with third-party systems. Mozilla aims to establish an alternative ecosystem called “Thunderbird Pro”, which will provide similar services to Gmail and Office365 but will be built using open-source software only.
The linchpin of the “Thunderbird Pro” initiative will be the mail service thundermail, allowing users to create mailboxes and email addresses. The current prototype is based on the Stalware platform. Development work necessary for Thundermail, including integration with the calendar and address book components, has already been coordinated with the platform provider. Domains thundermail.com and tb.pro have been registered for the service, with plans for testing to commence soon.
The Stalware platform, written in the Rust language, is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license and offers a comprehensive solution for setting up mail servers. It includes an SMTP server with support for extensions like dane, mta-sts, smtp tls, dmarc,