Skip to content

Thunderbird Council

The Thunderbird Council is the elected governing body for the Thunderbird Project. The Council functions in some ways like a board of directors since it helps shape product strategy, reviews major decisions, and has oversight of funds. The key difference is that this group is chosen by the community. This ensures that leadership grows from the people who use and contribute to the project. The Council works alongside the MZLA company board and helps keep the project aligned with open source values and the Mozilla mission.

The Council ensures that Thunderbird remains true to its core values of privacy, freedom, and user empowerment. Established in 2014, it serves as the voice of the community and encourages a collaborative space for contributors. It is composed of seven members who are elected by the Thunderbird community.

The Council typically meets one hour every two weeks. We aim to have at least one in-person meeting per year, which can be attached to a MZLA/Mozilla company event like MozWeek or a meetup around an open source tech conference like FOSDEM.

Relationship to Mozilla and MZLA

The Thunderbird project is a part of the Mozilla ecosystem. It is jointly stewarded by the Thunderbird Council and MZLA Technologies.

Both MZLA Technologies Corporation and Mozilla Corporation are subsidiaries of the Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corporation takes care of Firefox and related products, and MZLA takes care of Thunderbird and related projects. MZLA was created following discussions between former councils and the Mozilla Foundation, in order to provide the necessary structure for Thunderbird to operate professionally.

The Council works closely with MZLA to set and adjust the long term strategic direction. Per our Term Sheet, the Thunderbird Council is responsible for:

  • Oversight of the Thunderbird Project
  • Oversight of funds and donations
  • Developing overall yearly goals
  • Approving the yearly project budget
  • Collaborate with MZLA on developing the yearly product roadmap
  • Providing advice on and approving the yearly staff goals

For more information about the Council, see this video with Council members Danny and Patrick:

Join the Election Roll

Interested in making a difference in the Thunderbird community? Anyone who has contributed 20 hours to Thunderbird in the past two years is invited to join the Election Roll, which allows them to vote and stand for election. Starting in 2025, the election occurs every two years. Contributors must renew their membership each year in the month of January. Please subscribe to the Thunderbird Planning mailing list for the registration announcement.

See the Election page for more information.

Get Involved

Contribute to Thunderbird: Participate - Thunderbird Also see: Codetribute

Discussions and community updates are on the Thunderbird Planning mailing list: Thunderbird Planning

Thunderbird Goals

In 2024, the Council created a list our highest priority goals, where there was unanimous agreement from participating members, in order to help guide our decisions and work with MZLA on developing the roadmaps:

  1. Declare that a goal of the Thunderbird project is to increase the amount of digitally signed and end-to-end encrypted email exchanged by Thunderbird users on the public Internet
  2. Continue to invest in open standards
  3. Make end-to-end encryption a cornerstone of all our product and service offerings
  4. Increase stability and correctness of the Thunderbird
  5. Start a bug bounty program
  6. Invest in improvements for chat to become a modern instant messaging application
  7. Investigate newer forms of communication

See our community update for the full list of goals and much more details. During the 2025-2026 term, the Council is planning to use our oversight authority to ensure that MZLA completes all of them in the next few years as intended.

Documents

See our GitHub repository for the full list of documents.

Contact Us

See the members page for details on how to contact the council or individual members.

Also see the Thunderbird module owners to learn more about the technical project governance.