Open source developer Mozilla has decided to move its email client Thunderbird to a "new, separate organisational setting", thereby allowing it to focus almost entirely on its increasingly popular internet browser Firefox.

Writing in her blog, Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker said that "the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it," and hence it was time for "the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny".

Baker sees three possible options for the future of Thunderbird:

The first would be to create a new non-profit organisation analogous to the Mozilla Foundation. This option has the advantage of offering the maximum independence for Thunderbird, but it is also the most organisationally complex and would incur large start-up overheads.

The second option is to create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird, which would reduce the initial overheads but would leave the program with less focus and less flexibility compared to the first option.

The final option would be for Thunderbird to be released as a community project much like SeaMonkey. For this to happen a small independent services and consulting company would need to be formed by the Thunderbird developers to continue development and care for its users.

However, Baker reckons "creating this as a non-profit would be extremely difficult. Running a services company as an independent taxable company is the simplest operational answer. We would need to figure out how such a company relates to the Thunderbird product itself."

There is clearly still a long way to go before the fate of Thunderbird will be decided, and Mozilla is asking for as much input as possible from the open source community to help guide its decision.

Baker concluded in her blog entry: "We don't know the best answer yet. And we don't expect to without a broad public discussion and involvement, which we hope this message will trigger."

Commentators have had mixed reactions to the news, with some saying this might spell the end for Thunderbird and it may backfire on Mozilla if users move to integrated email/browser applications such as SeaMonkey. Others have hailed the idea, suggesting that Thunderbird should find a new home, possible as part of the OpenOffice application suite.