Making major changes - as we’re doing with Supernova - requires very careful consideration.Īs you’re reading this, it might help to imagine Thunderbird as an enormous Lego tower you’ve built. Thunderbird is a monolithic application that has been developed by thousands of people over the course of two decades. What’s all this stuff about “technical debt?” Why does it need to be rebuilt? Let’s talk about how we got here, and shed some light on the the complicated history of Thunderbird’s development. Thunderbird: An Old, Fragile LEGO Tower Photo by Mourizal Zativa on Unsplash Inside those objectives there are hundreds of very large steps that need to happen, and achieving everything will require a lot of time and resources.

Rebuild the interface from scratch to create a consistent design system, as well as developing and maintaining an adaptable and extremely customizable user interface.

Make the code base leaner and more reliable, rewrite ancient code, remove technical debt.

Throughout the next 3 years, the Thunderbird project is aiming at these primary objectives: Simply “adding stuff on top” of a crumbling architecture is not sustainable, and we can’t keep ignoring it. This is not an easy task, but it’s necessary to guarantee the sustainability of the project for the next 20 years. Thunderbird is undergoing a massive rework from the ground up to get rid of the technical and interface debt accumulated over the past 10 years.

It’s a modernized overhaul of the software, both visually and technically. With this year’s release of Thunderbird 115 “Supernova,” we’re doing much more than just another yearly release. 3 Objectives For The Next 3 Yearsīefore we really dig in, let’s start with the future. Watch our companion video, hosted by Alex, which goes into even more detail.

New thunderbird