Earlier this week Scott McGregor announced he was leaving Mozilla Corp.  Now comes the  announcement David Bienvenu, the only other Thunderbird Developer is also leaving on October 12th:

Just wanted to let everyone know that my last day at The Mozilla Corporation will be Oct. 12. I intend to stay involved with Thunderbird and to continue on as a module owner. I’ve enjoyed working at Mozilla a lot, and I wish Mozilla Co and the new Mail Co all the best.

As Percy points out in his article, Thunderbird is after all an open-source project.  This means anyone can work on Thunderbird and keep it alive but any new development could be significantly delayed.  But still one has to wonder what is happening with Mozilla when in less than a weeks time two major Thunderbird developers/engineers announce their hasty departure from Mozilla.

Also troublesome is there has been no news on either Scott McGregor’s or now David Bienvenu’s departures from Chief Lizard Wrangler, Mitchell Baker.  Also no comments from David Ascher, CEO of ‘Mail Co’ (Thunderbird subsidiary spin-off).  May be they have decided to wait until after these two have left to make any comments or statements.  May be they already knew about David Bienvenu’s upcoming departure and will make a comment at the start of next week.  Or may be not.  We’ll just have to wait and see what develops.

News Source: Mozilla Links