What Is Mozilla Thunderbird?

Thunderbird is a free open source standalone email and news application that is supported on the Windows (95, 98, Me, 2000, XP), Mac (OS X), and Linux platforms. It is intended to be the perfect companion for Firefox, which is the open source standalone browser discussed in Chapters 1 through 8. Thunderbird includes a number of desirable features and offers numerous ways to manage your email and newsgroups in a fast, safe, and efficient manner. Figure 9-1 shows an example of what the Thunderbird program looks like after it has been installed and mail accounts have been set up.

Figure 9-1. The Thunderbird program.

FAQ: Why is it Free?

Thunderbird is part of a burgeoning open source effort that promotes the development of innovative software that users can download and use for free. Users are also permitted to view and modify the source code as long as they adhere to the terms of the software license.

To learn more about open source, see Chapter 1, "Getting Started."

To learn more about who works on Thunderbird, go to Help | About Mozilla

Thunderbird to see the list of credits.