* This is from the separate independent team that works on Thunderbird, not Firefox, so there isn't any resource contention happening there
* Thunderbird is revenue positive, and this potentially gives that team another revenue stream to be even more self-sustaining through charging companies
* Businesses definitely want to control the AI they're using (especially with RAGs of their own data) instead of just throwing it at their LLM vendor and hoping for the best
People on HN are fond of asserting that their own POV is the only one. Imagine that there is such a thing as a person in charge of choosing technologies for organizations, and that you're such a person. That's who this is for.
Hmm, I thought the for-profit Thunderbird pro hadn't launched yet?
I know Thunderbird is for profit, but what are they profitting from without the paid service, and how much of that profit is going into this unrelated Thunderbolt AI platform, exactly?
I think a piece of software running on donations is not running off "charity". It's just a business model to not charge every user. Similar to how Twitch streamers operate, or my local theater group.
You can read how they spent money in 2024 [1].
[1] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-...
It would be interesting to have a breakdown of what part of the Thunderbird team is working on Thunderbird, Thunderbolt, or other forms of thunder.
Is that why I'm met with a splash screen asking me to donate every time I start Thunderbird? Is this another Wikipedia situation?
Their Thunderbird for iOS repo is 34k lines.
I'm so very tired.
"I will make loads of assumptions without checking so that I can invent reasons to get mad"
Note that about 30,000 of those lines are JSON files for localization and testing, as one example.
Language Files Lines Blanks Comments Code
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
TypeScript 760 109110 14500 7397 87213
JSON 41 22056 6 0 22050
Markdown 56 7150 2086 0 5064
YAML 33 3965 406 208 3351
... and many more with fewer than 1k lines
Especially curious because I see a whole lot of hardcoded english text in there…
https://ghloc.vercel.app/thunderbird/thunderbolt?branch=main claims 141k and most of it is Typescript.
I just checked one old take home task in Angular I did last year and the total number of lines is over five million over 35k+ files.
Also, my impression is: yay another AI front-end. What does this one differently that the other thirteen in a dozen don't?
Mozilla's a lot more trustworthy with privacy and data, and they're unlikely to sell the project to someone who only wants to stuff it full of malware/adware/crypto stuff - or do it themselves.
They're certainly doing better than others in this space, but their track record does not inspire confidence for anyone concerned about their privacy and data.
"I'm using Mozilla Thunderbolt."
"Huh, do you mean Thunderbird?"
"No, Thunderbolt!"
I want them to go cap-in-hand to other countries and say "if you don't fund us then you are letting the US and surveillance capitalism get between your citizens and their government" and "do you really know what Chrome is doing with your data?"
I don't want to pretend they are simply part of a browser marketplace, but rather have them realize they are part of a civil rights effort, with powerful non-market forces they can allay with.
And I want those governments to commit to progressive enhancement guidelines like https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressi... so new alternatives like Ladybird can start, and further require their agencies to test on a Firefox branch with no AI, no location tracking, full ad-blocking, etc. because while the market is free to ignore certain non-profitable users, a government should not be allowed to ignore some of its citizens.
I don't see a contradiction there.
Does a dollar go from Marla to MZLA? Are those dollars not fungible?
It looks like they might want to get into hosting/selling services to users on this.
From the FAQ:
> Is there going to be a hosted version if I don't want to deploy it myself? > Yes, we are planning to launch Thunderbolt for regular users but we do not have a release date yet.
The world may need Firefox but it's funny how people complain about Mozilla's dependence on Google while also complaining about every attempt to become more financially independent from Google.
The current state of Mozilla is pretty odd since they rebranded to make it more apparent they're a non-profit, while also attempting to become more profitable pushing out new products and services.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2009...
As a former Netscape user… I think it’s almost masochistic to remain on Firefox as it’s rewarding a company that mismanaged its only product into the ground. And for what? What is the amazing thing Mozilla did at the expense of Firefox and donating the direction of internet technologies to Google?
The executives got to attend a bunch of fancy gallows, and Pat themselves on the back?
Is there a FF fork doing anything good out there?
Floorp comes with additional custom interface features, workspaces (tabs grouping) and mouse gestures. And bit better profiles feature - Mozilla decided to redo it recently which lead to some problems.
Mullvad has build in VPN, DoH and proxy as an extension, and comes with uBo and NoScript.
There's Zen browser that has a quite uncommon UI, and obscure Pale Moon that IIRC still tries to provide old XUL/XPCOM extensions - which often leads to pages rendering issues.
It seems like all the model inference is external APIs? So why is the marketing claiming "Self-host on your infrastructure or let us help you deploy. Your data never leaves your control."
Could Mozilla hand over firefox to a new team please? It is clear they are wasting time and energy on things nobody wanted - who wants Mozilla-AI please? I mean, seriously?
For people who don't think Mozilla wants to make firefox competitive again; and for those who also don't think ladybird will become a viable alternative one day (that's for the future, I have no crystal ball, I am just pointing at one possibility here). Perhaps we could get more momentum when someone else other than Mozilla handles firefox.