The open-source developer of the Firefox browser has fleshed out its plan for a new Mozilla Messaging subsidiary. The new division is expected to deliver significant enhancements to the next release of Mozilla Thunderbird, an e-mail client built on the same technology platform as the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation’s successful Web browser.
“The stunning proportion of time that many people spend communicating online each day clearly indicates that, as a society, we are more intricately connected via the Internet than ever before,” said Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher in a recent blog. “Yet the joy that communication can bring is too often replaced by frustration, confusion, or stress” as “privacy and control questions become more and more troublesome.”
As Mozilla Messaging attempts to resolve this paradox, the Mozilla Foundation will place greater emphasis “on the notion that anyone can, and should, participate in helping fix whatever is broken,” Ascher said.
A Collaborative Effort
Although Mozilla Messaging has its own core development team, the subsidiary has no intention of doing all the work on its own. As was the case with the development of Firefox, it expects major help from the worldwide community of open-source developers.
“We see our primary role as that of facilitating collaborative approaches to problem solving and incremental progress, through a combination of leadership and facilitation work,” Ascher said. “We’ll provide significant input and leadership in the direction setting, engineering work, and operational support, but the really interesting story will be whether we can convince people to spend their time working with us.”
Still, the foundation believes it has sufficient consensus in the Internet community to decide which enhancements should be tackled first. Its goals are integrated calendaring, enhanced search and an improved user interface.
“What each of those means in practice will be worked out in public, on blogs, mailing…