Following the recent news that the Mozilla Corporation will be creating a separate for-profit subsidiary for the development of Thunderbird comes Scott MacGregor’s resignation from the Mozilla Corporation and his announcement that he will pursue his own path instead of joining the new MailCo.
Scott and David Bienvenu have been key shepherds of the Netscape/Mozilla Mail/News codebase for the better part of a decade. They were on the team that built the mail client in the early Mozilla builds, and founded the Thunderbird project when it became clear that building separate apps for different Communicator components was the way of the future. Over the years, many people have contributed to the Mail code, but Scott and David remain inextricably linked with it.
When I moved to the United States in 2003 to continue work at Netscape, I got to know Scott better and when I started working on Firefox we collaborated on many pieces of shared infrastructure, like the installer, the download manager and the extension system. I will always remember sitting next to him at the old Mozilla Foundation offices as we hacked our way towards our respective 1.0s.
In the world of open source, where brashness and ego are commonplace, it’s rare to find a real gentleman, but that’s Scott.
Best of luck for the future in any endeavor you pursue.
Update
David Bienvenu, the other Thunderbird developer, has also announced his intention to leave the Mozilla Corporation. Like Scott, he will not be joining MailCo.
