Some say 13 is an unlucky number. For Mozilla Thunderbird, the organization’s open-source email client, it certainly is: just over a month ago, version 13.0 was released, and now its rapid development has come to an end.

According to the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker, Mozilla will release one more major version on November 20th of this year, and then release just security updates for another year. He says that much of Mozilla, including the Thunderbird Team, have concluded “on-going stability is the most important thing, and that continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts”.

He also explains that “most Thunderbird users seem happy with the basic email feature set” and most other email users are now using web-based interfaces such as Gmail and Hotmail. Are you a fervent Thunderbird user, or have you moved onto the wonderful wonderful world of webmail?

[Mitchell’s Blog via The Verge]