Posted by playfultones 12 hours ago
As for the donations, Thunderbird seems to be somehow apart from Mozilla now, so I don't think much about specific org structure and will gladly donate.
Maybe on paper there're dozens of alternatives, but when I consider my specific requirements, I haven't found anything better, YMMV.
"How will my gift be used?"
"Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development."
Well that tells me exactly nothing. This might not be as big an issue if they were separate from Mozilla. To be concrete, and focusing only on the development of Firefox, there's now an AI chatbot in the sidebar. I think that's a good addition. However, when the only options are proprietary services, it's hard for me to see the point of Firefox. It would be easier to get out my credit card for Thunderbird if I didn't have those thoughts in the back of my mind. As it stands, my donation might be going to fund the Mozilla CEO's salary.
Consider it also from the recipient's perspective. Their benefactors are more likely to donate more money when they believe it will be put to good use. It's a complicated messaging problem, but being vague is probably not in your best interest.
It's not a weird sentiment to want to know what benefits a gift is providing. That's all people are asking for when they want transparency around donations: tell us how you're benefiting from it so we can feel good about gifting you.
Is it necessary? No. The point being made is that people would be happier and potentially gift more if there was more transparency. If your argument is transparency costs more than the extra gifts then the solution to that is - ironically - be transparent about it and people might gift means to make transparency cheaper and make donations viable.
"I bought you tickets for your favorite artist for your birthday. I expect a detailed trip report" :)
Yes, you're right, personal gifts aren't donations, but then maybe we should stop calling donations gifts, too. Gifts are given without any expectations attached. Donations do and should have expectations.
But nobody wants to hear that they gave those tickets to their pimp, either.
(In practice, they presumably couldn't do that, at least not effectively, because the code is open source and someone else could fork it. But let's imagine that somehow they could require all Thunderbird users to pay them.)
That doesn't, of course, mean that it would be better overall. Thunderbird users would go from getting Thunderbird for free and maybe having reason to donate some money, to having to pay some money just to keep the ability to use Thunderbird: obviously worse for them. There'd probably be more money available for Thunderbird development, which would be good. The overall result might be either good or bad. But it would, indeed, no longer be unclear whether and why a Thunderbird user might choose to pay money to the Thunderbird project.
Instead, people act like they're buying in to a 50% share with their $5 and then act like they cofounded the project forever after the donation.
You've twisted the timing. My comment is about
"Give me money." "Okay, tell me why I should give you money."
not
"I gave you money. Tell me what you did with it." It's a big difference. It's easy for me to just not give them money if I don't know what I'm donating to.
Though I'm making a general reflection rather than trying to antagonize any individual here. I was already thinking about this when clicking into TFA to see that yes, it's another donation beg.
The answer to the person I replied to is basically: yes.
There's a nit in human psychology between mutual transactions (even lopsided against our favor) and voluntary unilateral ones (like donations) where the latter results in disproportionate scrutiny and entitlement compared to the former.
I once started accepting donations on my forum. I noticed people acted like they were about to make the grandest gesture in the world, would I be so lucky to deserve it after answering their questions despite having built a forum they spend four hours a day on. (They gave me $5)
And once they donated, they saw themselves as a boardmember-like persona with veto power and a disproportionate say on what I do, often pointing out that they're a donor. (They gave me $5)
I'm exaggerating a bit to paint a picture of what I mean. I think it's all unintentional, and they might be embarrassed if I'd told them this.
But I ended up refunding everyone after a while.
Yet when I charged $5 to let users expand their PM inbox size or max avatar resolution, nobody ever brought it up. They understood the transaction ended there. What is the $5 used for? -- What do you mean? It doubled my PM inbox size.
It's a funny quirk of our brain. I think a license purchase aligns expectations much more than groveling for donations, and it creates a natural freemium model for open source (or source-available rather?) projects.
It also isn't that unusual for donations to be ring fenced for certain things.
It felt like a betrayal to me.
Not that I think the other companies were bad, but if they have so much money they're giving it away to other people then they obviously don't need my money anymore.
If they wanted people to give other companies money then why didn't they have a separate different begging drive for those companies instead of just deciding, "Well, this is my money now, given to me to keep the site running and our employees paid, I'm going to give it away instead of using for the purpose that I literally begged it for".
If instead I donate to an open-source project, I'm not doing it in order to get access to the product; I already have that. I'm doing it because I hope they will do something with the money that I value. (Possible examples: Developing new features I like. Rewarding people who already developed features I liked. Activism for causes I approve of. Continuing to provide something that benefits everyone and not just me.)
And so I care a lot what they're going to do with the money, in a way I don't if I (say) pay money to Microsoft in exchange for the right to use Microsoft Office. Because what they're going to do with the money determines what point there is in my giving it.
Sometimes, everything the project does is stuff I think is valuable (for me or for the world). In that case I don't need to ask exactly what they're doing. Sometimes, it's obvious that what happens to the money is that it goes into the developer's pockets and they get to do what they like with it. In that case, I'll donate if the point of my donation is to reward someone who is doing something I'm glad they're doing, and probably not otherwise.
In the case of Thunderbird, it's maybe not so obvious. Probably the money will go toward implementing Thunderbird features and bug fixes, but looking at the history of Firefox I might worry that that's going to mean "AI integrations that actual users mostly don't want" or "implementing advertising to help raise funds", and I might have a variety of attitudes to those things. Or it might go toward some sort of internet activism, and again I might have a variety of attitudes to that depending on exactly what they're agitating for. Or maybe I might worry that the money will mostly end up helping to pay the salary of the CEO of Mozilla. (I don't think that's actually possible, but I can imagine situations where Mozilla wants some things done, and if they can pay for them via donations rather than using the company's money they'll do so, so that the net effect of donating is simply to increase Mozilla's profits.)
And I don't think anyone's asking for anything very burdensome in the way of transparency. Just more than, well, nothing at all which is what we have at the moment. The text on the actual page says literally nothing beyond "help keep Thunderbird alive". The FAQ says "Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development." which tells us almost nothing. And "MZLA Technologies Corporation is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and the home of Thunderbird." which tells us that donations go to a for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation (which I believe is the same entity that owns the Mozilla Corporation, but like most people I am not an expert on this stuff and don't know what that means in practice about how the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation and MZLA Technologies Corporation actually work together).
Maybe donated money will lead to MZLA Technologies Corporation hiring more developers or paying existing developers more? Maybe it'll be used to buy equipment, or licences for patented stuff? Maybe it'll be used to advertise Thunderbird and get it more users? Maybe it'll be used to agitate for the use of open email standards or something like that? Maybe. Maybe some other thing entirely. There's no way to get any inkling.
With that said I also think we should expect more then "it helps fund the development". Its not that difficult to write a couple paragraphs more and be a little more specific. Then again, maybe they get so little in donations that they cant really say how the money will be used and its more of a "buy me a beer" type of thing to keep the developers happy. Unless suddenly people start giving more and a developer actually could invest more hours in the project.
I disagree.
If you are asking people for donations, then it is only fair that you provide transparency.
Donations are made out of pure goodwill. It is not like buying a widget from $megacorp.
I do not buy the "increased administrative costs" argument either. At a bare minimum all it would take is 5 minutes a month and a simple spreadsheet.
If I donate, I want more devs getting paid, not a CEO parasiting the non-profit.
Some people simply want the "best fit" solution for a product. IMO, this used to be Outlook+Exchange, hands down... M365 scaling has enshittified the bundle in a lot of ways leaving a wide gap for alternatives. Google's GMail is a leading alternative that is a closed service. Thunderbird is an open solution that solves part of the problem (shared calendars/contacts only having half the solution).
When you pay for a product, you often are able to give feedback and request for features... the expectation is that you are getting value for what you are paying and that the company continues to do so while adding features that add more value in time.
When you donate to an open-source project, and that project redirects funds to have a multi-million dollar marketing event that only benefits middle managers and seeks to add revenue with features the majority of donors oppose, then someone who would otherwise support the development might rightly feel a bit betrayed or choose not to donate altogether, much like someone might not purchase a given product or service from a company that does what they feel are bad things.
It's not dramatically different, it's just when/where the individual might expect a level of transparency, value or direction. A purchase is against existing value... a donation is against future value.
What I don't get is why people don't think the same for for-profit enterprises. If I spend $120 a year on some SaaS, I don't ask what portion of that goes into the CEOs pocket who might use that money to buy politicians to advance tax policy they prefer, or government contracts against the public interest, etc.
It's not about the expected value of a product, it's about what else your money funds when you hand it over to a corporation that people rarely consider. They should consider it just as much as they consider donations to non-profits.
Also, the assumption of a healthy market is not one I would take. A lot of corporate money is spent on regulatory capture and other ways to prevent a healthy market. Funded by customer spend. A purchase is against future value in the same way that past purchases are what allow companies today to make markets less healthy.
You pay for an existing product/service and expect that product/service to be fit for a need... that's generally it as far as expectations go... some may actually care about a company being a bad actor and boycott etc, but that's secondary in and of itself. You immediately get the product or service that exists.
A donation, is against expectations for results... though there may be other reasons to donate to a cause/charity.
Firefox should have a war chest worth of cash at hand, if it hadn't been spent on massive layers of managers and marketers. They've tried repeatedly to spin off monetization in order to increase the overall charity, and I can understand that desire... but they've done so to levels that absolutely compromise the core of what the org is known for... the software.
They effectively HAD electron decades before electron.. they left it unsupported and let it die... they HAD a great mail/nntp platform, they left it to die and only recently realized it was a thing and tried to resurrect it only as a potential for more monetization. They HAD an engineering staff that was reshaping the direction of low-level development (Rust and related) and they let them all go so they could keep paying middle-managers and marketeers for a charity that was never self-sufficient and only served to drain or monetize their core products to detrimental effect.
I would like Mozilla to have great products and succeed... but frankly, I don't like the parent org, charity structure or their direction at all. They're the worst examples of "woke HR" you can find online and I emphatically won't be giving them cash... I truly hope that at some point the developers can just spin off the open-source itself into a new org similar to Libre Office, and break away. If all they did was the software and their existing monetization, they'd have all of their developer staff and a long headroom of funding in the bank.
If you're asking for donations and holding your cap out, the implication is that every penny will go toward development.
Mozilla should either just make it a product that you have to pay for, or sub to, or keep donations cleanly separated.
If I am going to donate money to a company/NGO that wants to buy food for poor people, of course I am interested in knowing how much of that money is going to salaries, how much into activities of sort, and how much in actually feeding people.
In the case of Mozilla, you actually know donating to the Mozilla Foundation does not in any way benefit Firefox or Thunderbird, which is probably the whole reason you were actually donating in the first place. Donating to the Mozilla Foundation funds all the pointless side projects they they decide to pick up and pay the CEO quite frankly an undeservedly large salary.
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-...
Isn’t that quite a bit high? Or am I looking at something incorrectly. Maybe someone has some suggestions for them on how to lower that amount.
There could be currency exchange rates that are factored in at the donation end as well.
I agree that 10% is high, but it's still explainable.
I believe they use stripe and this would also include:
- subscription billing fee (up to 0.7%)
- currency exchange fees
- chargeback fees
- processing fees on refunded transactions
Written this way, it sounds like "donate or we'll have to make you pay for it"
Thunderbird, separate from Mozilla, I don't think has that to rely on. That does feel more like "why should I give money to this project that (for me) has been pretty mid at maintaining a popular piece of software?"
And I was an user of firebird, the database.
Browser: Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox Mail client: Minotaur -> Thunderbird
And I was an user of firebird, the database.
Also K9Mail is now Thunderbird for Android.
I don't think that's the case.
"Thunderbird is part of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation."
Thunderbirds sourcecode is literally part of the same mercury codebase as Firefox.
Thunderbird does have a very small team, and I think everyone that uses it should considering donating.
(Also, someone help a non-native speaker: I think the "effect"s above should be "affect", but for some reason that looked wrong here. Why is that?)
However, both have alternative meanings as the other part of speech.
Affect as a noun means emotion or disposition, and is mostly used in psychology. Your psychologist may say you have a depressed affect.
Effect as a verb means to bring about. You might say that a successful protest effected change in society.
As a verb, in addition to “have an impact on,” affect can also mean “to pretend to have,” like “she affected an air of mystery,” although this is less common.
The way you used "effect" here, its verb sense of "to bring about or cause" is the one that suggests itself, which isn't what you meant.
The simple way to keep the words' overlapping meanings straight, is that it's "effect" when it's a noun, "affect" when it's a verb. "Effect" can also be a verb, and "affect" can be a noun, but those definitions don't overlap.
Your post did indeed call for "affect", as you suspected.
Edit: hmm, re-reading it now, affect does look right. Weird.
It's definitely wrong in that paragraph.
and technology choices made in Firefox can and do affect Thunderbird, just like they effect e.g. Zen Browser or Tor Browser.
English is a bit of a bastard language IIUC, and so we accept the way you've phrased it too, but in that case it should be "affect".
I hope this helps rather than making things more confusing! ;)
There's been a few ups and downs along the way but I've found it generally "just works" and gets out the way, which is exactly what I want in an email client.
I've tried almost every single email client I could find on Linux, and several on Windows (including Pegasus mail, if anyone remembers that), but always come back to Thunderbird.
I've been a regular donator to the project ever since they spun it out to MZLA Technologies Corporation.
However, I find TB's development very misguided - it's evident to me that they give very little priority to stability:
- addons support (APIs) is a dumpster fire, and IMO a large addon ecosystem is what makes a client unique
- not so long ago, they added an instant messaging client, which has been a waste of dev resources
- at some point they overhauled the UI, but the result was a bloated slow mess (on some platforms), even with broken defaults
- there are bugs open for at least a decade (I consistently hit one)
It gives me the impression that the management prioritizes work that looks good on a screenshot, rather than stability.
I think it'd be positive if the Thunderbird org shut down. There are more pragmatic teams who could take over the project (see Betterbird).
Source?
Thunderbird is owned by Mozilla ... if I donate, my money goes to Mozilla.
How much money do you currently get? How much money do you need and how will you use it? Does it even go directly to Thunderbird development or will be used up by Mozilla for other projects?
Edit: I found some info here: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/
Still, my point stands that communication around it should be super clear and available on all pages where they collect money. It shouldn't require me to search for it.
> How will my gift be used?
> Thunderbird is the leading open source email and productivity app that is free for business and personal use. Your gift helps ensure it stays that way, and supports ongoing development.
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-...
> We do not discriminate on the basis of race [...], religion [...], gender, gender identity, gender expression, color, national origin, pregnancy, ancestry, domestic partner status, disability, sexual orientation, age, genetic predisposition, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, or any other basis covered by applicable laws. Mozilla will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics or any other unlawful behavior, conduct, or purpose.
To be clear, I fully support the right to be and feel and think whatever you want, but don't expect me to care about it, and this endless signposting of identity is tiresome.
As such, I really don't see why you have a problem with Mozilla making their position on this matter crystal clear. Do you really consider reading a few extra words that much of a hardship?
I would be happy to directly sponsor independent developers from poor countries (including Africa). But I am not going to pay $180k+ salaries to some corporation!
* https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/
Edit: I just checked the Invoice, payment goes indeed to Mozilla Corporation, not the foundation.
It is more like money laundering, than independent entity.
This is completely and utterly false.
MZLA hiring posts are placed on the Mozilla hiring site, and nothing more.
Works perfect, I even migrated my Windows install to Linux just by copying the data folder, absolutely seamless.
Not sure why people are hating on it so much here. Point to an alternative with the same features?
The fact that they haven't invested in anything resembling a companion set of services for shared calendar/contacts is also a heavy pain point in contrast to the use of GMail or Outlook/M365/Exchange. If they had offered hosted email/calendar/contacts alone as a monetization option, they could have done so well ahead of GMail or M365 options and could still do so and under-cut them... having an open-core suite just for communications.
They've left a lot of options out there to die... they effectively had Electron a few decades before Electron was a thing. XulRunner was pretty nice to use, and they just left it to die... it got worse over time and just stopped seeing updates. All the while, the charity org and business org just kept spinning their wheels and basically throwing money away... for decades now.
In these years, I've also had it on Windows and Linux, I've migrated it easily across many OS installs and hardware changes, I've used it with different kinds of email accounts and servers. It's worked with PGP encrypted mail, with SpamAssassin on the server and more.
It's great. It doesn't change much, which is probably a good thing, Firefox lost me as a user at some point. Thunderbird mostly stays the same, adding features occasionally. As I write this, I realize I'm so used to Thunderbird I'm not even sure what other clients are available. Definitely one of the best programs I've used.
Its a beautiful open source effort but products that have bugs like that languish for 10-20 years just aren't reliable. I need my mail client to be reliable.
But we should not spread FUD. If you can link to the bug I'd be interested, otherwise it doesn't add much value to claim this.
* there are rare cases of a profile either misplaced (exists but not correctly pointed to) or gone - it is something which I understand Firefox people are working on (Thunderbird uses the Firefox profile system) * there are extremely rare reports where prefs.js is corrupted * there are no compact failures in current versions - there are no open bug reports for recent versions, so it has been totally obliterated by a rewrite and subsequent fixes. Most user reports of compact failure are attributed to other causes of folder corruption * folder corruption can occur as easily from external sources as from product bugs.
Anyone who has a problem can file a support request at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird to get assistance.
Also, beware drawing broad conclusions about other users' experience from one's own personal experience. I have almost never experienced corruption - once in the last 10 years. But I am also using a Thunderbird profile that has gone through 5 different laptops, two different OS, using daily builds, which is AMPLE opportunity to have had multiple catastrophic failures. But because I know other users experiences I consider myself lucky.
2. doesn't cut trackers
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1g0m0um/how_to_set_up... is what I did.
I'd rather use Google's web storage than my own. I don't have the time nor the expertise to implement multi-region replication etc.
I understand that granting Google access to one's emails might be a dealbreaker for journalists, dissidents etc, though - so clearly Gmail is no good if you have legitimate need for PGP.
I would argue everyone does, most people just don't really think about what they are giving away. And how many emails a day are you receiving that a daily or hourly incremental offside backup wouldn't give you almost all of the benefits of "multi region replication"?
They used to still offer "basic HTML" gmail, which was waaaaaay better all around and was the only way I used it on any platform, but they discontinued that some time back.
And, yes, proper support for Sieve, including per-folder Sieve. Sieve is a pain after they changed something and 3rd party Sieve plugin died (become Electorn Application).
Now Thunderbird has so many rough edges (I named only my top-3, but I'm sure anybody can add others!), but still one and only usable cross-platform e-mail client.
Oh, yes, development pace is unbearable slow: after killing "Manually sort folders" plugin it takes more than year (!) to add this as "core" feature with huge help from aforementioned plugun's author. Very slow process of review, integrating, releasing which takes MONTHS to integrate ready feature. It should be very discouraging for contributors.
Thunderbird now provide like 10% of features of old and almost forgotten (but still alive) windows-only client "The Bat!" from end of 1990s, beginning of 2000s and was written by team of like 5 people.
But still, I've donated!
I used to love Thunderbird... I also used it a lot with BBS centric NNTP hosts... at some point those features largely broke as well, and extensions to correct the behavior fell farther and farther behind as well.
The lack of a good calendar/contacts server solution is also a massive pain point imo.
I thought you were owned by Mozilla? A corporation that has over half a billion dollars in yearly revenue? If they decided to allocate zero funding to you, wouldn't it be vastly more effective to start some sort of campaign/movement (either internal or external) to get that funding back, or to entirely fork and leave Mozilla to be your own independent project, than to ask for random donations?
However, MZLA is self funded.
Now not only does it still need donations, the tax exemption for donors has evaporated. Great.
I guess I don't understand why the open-source email client with zero revenue potential is managed by a for-profit subsidiary, nor why that for-profit subsidiary is begging for donations.
Shouldn't this whole thing be managed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation?
For what it's worth because legal names are confusingly similar, this is a legal subsidiary of Mozilla that is specific to Thunderbird, as in if you give it money it goes straight into Thunderbird. Many people here pretend to wish to be able to give money directly to Firefox, yet when they can do that for Thunderbird, people here are still finding bullshit reasons not to do so. Pick a lane.
Right, I get that, but why is it for-profit? Fund raising is hard enough for nonprofits, convincing people to donate their hard-earned cash to a for-profit is on a whole different level.
(Though of course, employees of either entity can be paid whatever, which also holds for every other non-profit.)
So that creates the strange situation where legally it is easier for free software developers to accept donations as a for-profit corporation than as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It is possible to instead incorporate as a not-for-profit corporation which doesn't have the tax advantages of a 501(c)(3), but does have the advantage of not being beholden to share holders. However, many people react negatively to this assuming that any not-for-profit that isn't a 501(c)(3) is a scam.
[1] https://www.stradley.com/business-vantage-point-blog/irs-con...
[2] https://www.mill.law/blog/more-501c3-rejections-open-source-...
At least as a point of funding the open-source work.
Note that many non-profits have exceptionally high-paid executives and "contractors".
Regulatory requirements on non-profit organizations are very high, and those organizations are, in fact, very limited in what they can do and how they receive their money. There are very good reasons for a non-profit to own for-profit entities, and, similarly, for philanthropic organizations to organize as for-profit entities.
It's basically in maintenance mode. Are they trying to add features nobody really wants to justify their existence, like Mozilla?
[1] https://chipp.in/news/thunderbird-financials-doing-really-we...
I also didn't care for the tabbed panels, which make it feel as if the entire thing was just ported from a browser. It really needs some fresh design and user interface work.
I'd heed the call for donation simply for returning to pre-2023 design with up-to-date security patches. As it is, maybe it's merciful if development just comes to a standstill. Almost every visible step lately seems to move in the wrong direction.
Now that I read the comments I find out Mozilla might have enough money and a CEO taking in millions. Any recommendations for a good email client on Linux? Just as a backup for now...
The Mozilla Foundation (non-profit parent org) does take donations. Which they could presumably funnel some of down to thunderbird development, but they chose not to, and now have this other for-profit management org fundraising Thunderbird separately...
I had no idea one way or the other, but if I'm reading this right [1] they are around $150MM currently for their endowment. Mozilla, meanwhile is actually around $1.2 billion and counting. But I think that makes sense for both, Wiki has the strongest donation drive in the world, and Mozilla is much more exposed to risk and in need of its firewall.
I don't think it changes anything, they're both good donation targets and Thunderbird is separately financed anyway so they still benefit from the $$ but I was surprised to see Wiki with the lower endowment.
1. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AFY...