What Thunderbird Means to Camino

Since the initial Thunderbird announcement, a few people have contacted me, specifically asking what this means to Camino and other mozilla.org projects. The general impression of the people who contacted me seemed to be that Mozilla somehow provides significant financial support to the Camino Project.

Just to clarify things… Camino receives no monetary support from the Mozilla Foundation or Corporation (with a couple exceptions; see below).

But surely, you say, Camino is somehow supported by Mozilla. We most definitely are. Camino has received support in the form of legal protection (trademark registration, EULA), a tinderbox (cb-xserve01 was donated by MoCo), bugzilla presence, disk space on production machines for mirroring and nightlies, CVS access and hosting, help with build machines, and other related services. In addition, many developers are more than kind and give us a heads up when they’re about to make a change that will “break the build”. Support like this is vital to our existence.

It’s been clear for a while, however, that Camino will not receive any significant support in the form of funding for developers and other related activities. There are exceptions to this — notably, the recent matching of funds for a second Summer of Code project by the Foundation; or the donation of a tinderbox; or paying the cost to get the Camino logo trademarked — but more often than not, the default answer regarding funds is “Firefox is the focus”.

It’s actually not possible to donate money to the Camino Project right now due to this. Any money donated to the Mozilla Foundation goes to a general fund which, likely, won’t benefit Camino. (An attempt to make it possible to donate specifically to Camino failed.)

All of the above is true for any project under the Foundation with the notable exception of Firefox and, at least right now, Thunderbird.

Let me again be clear… Firefox is a critical focus for Mozilla to have. I, personally, believe that focusing on Firefox helps the open web, including web standards. Having a company like Mozilla at the forefront of development, keeping Microsoft accountable and helping to protect users is truly wonderful. I’m proud to work for such a company.

In the end, the Thunderbird announcement has virtually no effect on how Camino is doing and has always done business. The Camino Project will continue to operate in the same manner it always has.