The K9 Mail Android application joins the Thunderbird open source project, whose brand it will eventually bear. This is good news for users of this email client with a complicated past.
Mozilla will spread the wings of its Thunderbird project on the Android platform. The open source foundation has just announced the integration of the K9 Mail mobile e-mail client into the Thunderbird range. Created by Christian Ketterer, who joins the development team of the American organization, this open source software will be destined to become the official version of Thunderbird for Android.
“Before that happens, we need to reach certain development milestones that will allow K-9 Mail to align with Thunderbird’s feature set and visual appearance. To do this, we will dedicate funds and development time to the continuous improvement of K-9 Mail”, explains Christian Ketterer in a blog post.
Thus, it is planned to integrate the automatic account configuration module of Thunderbird, to improve the management of files and to add support for message filters. By summer 2023, users should also be able to sync K9 Mail with the Thunderbird desktop client, thanks to the integration of the Firefox Sync add-on. The objective is to have a seamless use between these different platforms.
Two projects that share the same values
If Mozilla set its sights on K9 Mail, it’s because it didn’t want to reinvent the wheel.
“The Thunderbird team had many discussions about how we could provide a great mobile experience for our users. Ultimately, we didn’t want to duplicate our efforts if we could combine our strengths with an existing open source project that shared our values. After years of discussing ways K-9 and Thunderbird could work together, we decided it would be best for our users to work together,” reads a Thunderbird blog post.
For Thunderbird users, this is obviously great news. This merger proves that this open source project is definitely on the right track, after years of strategic upheavals. Remember, in fact, that the development team of Thunderbird had been dissolved in 2012 and that the project was almost ejected from the foundation in 2015. The project finally remained in the bosom of Mozilla and was able to start off on the right foot thanks to to an upsurge in donations. In 2020, Thunderbird is integrated into MZLA Technologies Corporations, a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. This allowed him to gain autonomy and agility. With success, as we see now.
Source :
Thunderbird