Days ahead of an official Thunderbird-related announcement, which Mozilla will be making this forthcoming Monday, Thunderbird Managing Director JB Piacentino revealed in a recent "confidential" message to the "Mozillians" that though the company is pulling people off the project, it is not "stopping" Thunderbird development.

Piacentino said in the message - in which it was also urged that the recipients should not share the contents till an official announcement is made - that Mozilla is planning to move its resources away from the development of the open-source e-mail software, hoping that the responsibility will be taken over by Thunderbird's vocal fans.

To put it differently, Mozilla is just now kind of pulling the plug on the Thunderbird software, and will probably look for feedback and plans for sharing a final action plan for the project in September.

According to a TechCrunch report, Piacentino said in the "confidential" message that Mozilla has arrived at the conclusion that "continued innovation on Thunderbird is not the best use of our resources given our ambitious organizational goals."

Noting that ongoing security and stability for the 20+ million users are the "most critical needs" for the product, Piacentino said that rather than "stopping" Thunderbird, Mozilla's proposal is that the Thunderbird release and governance model be adapted in such a way that it facilitates "ongoing security and stability maintenance, as well as community-driven innovation and development for the product."