Anything to glance forward to: Mozilla’s Thunderbird has lengthy been 1 of the best email clientele for all those that worth open-source application and privacy, but it is really only been readily available to desktop people. Thankfully, which is about to modify. Soon, Thunderbird will be coming to Android equipment thanks to a merger (of sorts) concerning Mozilla’s shopper and the K-9 Mail application.
If you might be wondering what K-9 Mail is, it’s a further open source e-mail consumer, a great deal like Thunderbird. Though it isn’t going to tout privacy as 1 of its vital characteristics, it features a number of other people — assistance for Drive IMAP, white and darkish themes, concept flagging, and the capacity to set up ‘multiple identities’ for email accounts, to identify a number of.
As for why Thunderbird is absorbing K-9 Mail now — seemingly out of the blue — it turns out that these ideas have been set in motion years back. Way back again in 2018, in reality. At the time, Thunderbird Products Supervisor Ryan Lee Sipes fulfilled with K-9 job maintainer Christian Ketterer to discuss a collaboration among K-9 and Thunderbird. These talks ultimately progressed into a more sturdy discussion about how the two different projects might join forces to produce an “great, seamless electronic mail working experience throughout platforms.”
For Ketterer and Sipes, that would not mean establishing an fully new cell customer jointly — but as an alternative only producing Thunderbird their collective target.
As these kinds of, at some level in the hopefully not-also-distant upcoming, K-9 will change into Thunderbird’s Android customer. The branding will transform, and the two the aesthetic and featureset will be altered to match Thunderbird’s desktop counterpart.
It will take a great deal of hard get the job done from the Thunderbird team and K-9’s contributors to access that point, of course. Nonetheless, now that Ketterer has joined the Thunderbird crew entire-time, the changeover need to be a bit smoother. At any rate, we are not able to hold out to see Thunderbird make the leap to Android, and we hope it transpires faster alternatively than afterwards.
