<story><title>Thunderbird 68.0</title><url>https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/68.0/releasenotes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yowlingcat</author><text>Does anyone have the inside story to what happened that caused Thunderbird to stop being developed in the first place, and what led to its development being picked back up again? It&amp;#x27;s not really clear what happened in either case to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hsivonen</author><text>Since there were others interested in continued development, Thunderbird development didn&amp;#x27;t stop when Mozilla Corporation decided to scale down its level of support for the project. After a new way of arranging funding was set up (through Mozilla Foundation), there has been more visibility of development. (I don&amp;#x27;t know of actual metrics of development activity over time.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Thunderbird 68.0</title><url>https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/68.0/releasenotes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yowlingcat</author><text>Does anyone have the inside story to what happened that caused Thunderbird to stop being developed in the first place, and what led to its development being picked back up again? It&amp;#x27;s not really clear what happened in either case to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saulrh</author><text>Wild-ass guess: Some enterprise user determined that quietly funding it would cost less than rebuilding some bit of internal tooling that depended on it.&lt;p&gt;(cunningham, cunningham, cunningham, come forth and correct me!)</text></comment>