The Document Foundation's LibreOffice and Thunderbird project could join forces in an effort to push for a singular solution.

Mozilla stopped the active development of the Thunderbird email client a few years ago and moved the reigns of the project in the hand of volunteers and members of the community. Mozilla is not seeing a future for this kind of applications, but it looks like that's not really the case.

Thunderbird is described as PIM, personal information manager, and it integrates functions like email, address book, calendar, and tasks. As it turns out, The Document Foundation would welcome the integration of such a powerful application into its own suite, and that's not really that far from happening.

Thunderbird and LibreOffice might have a future together

It's not really all that difficult to see that Thunderbird is not moving in straight line and that the development of the application has slowed down considerably. New features are rarely added and most of the releases just integrate security fixes.

Some discussions have been started by the Chair of the Thunderbird Council, R Kent James, who wants to know what's happening with the relationship between Thunderbird and Mozilla. It turns out that the email client could move out of the house, sooner rather than later.

"I understand that Thunderbird's future is currently under discussion and pretty much open. If it is decided to move Thunderbird out of Mozilla, I'd like to suggest to reach out to The Document Foundation and ask if they are interested. It seems to me that Thunderbird might be a good addition to their LibreOffice productivity suite," Executive Chairwoman for the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker said just a couple of days ago.

The Document Foundation is already planning to develop its own PIM software and that might not be necessary if Thunderbird joins forces. For now, only talks took place, but it actually looks like a really good match.

Update: The information that The Document Foundation is looking to build it's own PIM software is not accurate. Italo Vignoli, Marketing & PR lead for The Document Foundation explained this in an email.

"TDF has never thought to develop his own PIM software, because there are already several free software solutions which solve the PIM issue, providing a number of alternatives to the user."

Italo Vignoli also said that if Thunderbird finds a home with The Document Foundation, it's not necessarily true that it will integrated in a similar way with Outlook and Microsoft Office.

A comprehensive wiki, albeit unofficial, has been put together with all the ideas and statements that have been made so far regarding a collaboration between The Document Foundation and Thunderbird.