Ryan Sipes, Director of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation overseeing the development of the Thunderbird email client, has announced plans to create new services aimed at enhancing Thunderbird's usability. It is noted that Thunderbird is steadily losing users, remaining solely a client-side solution as users increasingly prefer ecosystems that offer both email clients and services like Gmail and Office365.
Gmail and Office365 are tied to vendor-specific solutions (vendor lock) and face portability issues which arise when interacting with other client applications or attempting integration with third-party systems. Mozilla aims to create an alternative, freedom-oriented ecosystem called "Thunderbird Pro," which will provide services similar to Gmail and Office365 but built using only open-source software.
A key element of the "Thunderbird Pro" initiative will be the Thundermail email service, allowing users to register mailboxes and email addresses. The currently in-development prototype is based on the Stalwart platform. Collaboration for implementing necessary functionalities for Thundermail, such as integrating components for a calendar-scheduler and an address book, has already been agreed upon for this platform. The service has already registered domains Thundermail.com and tb.pro, which host a placeholder for subscribing to notifications about the start of testing.
The Stalwart platform is written in Rust, distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license, and provides a combined solution for creating email services. serversThe package includes an SMTP server with built-in support for DANE, MTA-STS, SMTP TLS, DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and ARC extensions. Access to mailboxes is provided via a server that supports JMAP, IMAP4, and POP3 protocols. The platform integrates tools for spam filtering and phishing protection, including mechanisms such as a statistical Bayesian classifier, an AI analyzer based on a large language model, DNSBL filters, and greylist checking. Among additional features are a management web interface, built-in support for S/MIME and OpenPGP, a full-text search engine, the ability to use Sieve scripts, quotas, TLS certificate management, ACLs, authentication via OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0, capabilities for creating fault-tolerant configurations, and scaling options.
The Thunderbird Pro initiative also includes the following services:
- Thunderbird Appointment — a tool for scheduling meetings and managing calendars. To simplify the coordination of meeting times, it is sufficient to send a link to another user, who can then choose a convenient time considering the slots occupied in the Thunderbird calendar planner. The Appointment code is in beta testing, written in Python, and is distributed under the MPL-2.0 license.
- Thunderbird Send — a file-sharing service between users that utilizes end-to-end encryption. Thunderbird Send is a reimagining of the Firefox Send service, which was shut down due to its inability to handle malicious activities such as malware distribution and data theft. It is noted that the new version has been significantly redesigned and adapted for direct file sharing. The code is written in TypeScript and is open under the MPL-2.0 license.
- Thunderbird Assist — an AI assistant developed in collaboration with the developers of the Flower AI framework. The project's idea is to create a chatbot that processes requests on the user side. If the device is not powerful enough to run large language models, there will be an option to offload computations to the cloud using NVIDIA's confidential computing technologies, similar to how Apple Private Cloud Compute operates. The Thunderbird Assist code is in preparation for publication.
Initially, the services will be offered for free only to active community members, while others will have access only through a paid model. Once a sufficient user base is formed to sustain the operation of the services, limited functionality free tiers will be introduced, which, for example, will provide less data storage space.
Additionally, the release of the Thunderbird 137.0 email client, built on the Firefox 137 codebase, can be noted. Thunderbird 137 is the second release published under the new significant release model. Along with fixing bugs and vulnerabilities, the new version has disabled the system tray indicator integration in Linux systems, while Windows users now benefit from folder sorting by file names. Meanwhile, the ESR branch with long-term support has seen the release of Thunderbird 128.9.0, which includes bug fixes and security patches.
Source: opennet.ru
