Betterbird's Rationale

[NullNull777]

There are claims online that Thunderbird hasn't been developed very well for a long time, and that bugs have remained unfixed for months or even years. Then you hear a lot about Betterbird, including that it's a former Thunderbird developer who's making many things better.

Now it's 2026—what's the current state of affairs? Why aren't the bugs being fixed? Where does Betterbird excel, and why aren’t you improving on that?

I’m trying to decide which of the two to use, and I’m not quite sure what’s true and what isn’t. When you search for Thunderbird, you find a lot of arguments against you and many in favor of Betterbird.

I’d love to hear from you about what has changed and whether you plan to become better than the fork.

[wsm]

> There are claims online that Thunderbird hasn't been developed very well for a long time, and that bugs have remained unfixed for months or even years.

Thunderbird is thriving the last several years. So you are either seeing outdated information or reading poorly informed opinions.

A sampling of our focus and driving change for to benefit users:

• Release notes https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/releases/
• What's happening https://blog.thunderbird.net/
• 365 items fixed or enhanced in the last four years (since 2022-01-01), that were reported prior to 2022-01-01.  In other words hundreds of old issues are being addressed in Thunderbird.
• The 2026 roadmap, which lays out the top goals for 2026.

I can't speak to what Betterbird does differently, but it certainly gets the vast majority of it's changes from Thunderbird.

[edited]