PaleMoon team looking for a new FossaMail maintainer

A recent post by Moonchild, lead developer of PaleMoon and FossaMail, indicates that he is looking for a new maintainer for FossaMail.

FossaMail is an open source messaging program (email, chat and news) that is based on Mozilla's Thunderbird email client. Unlike Thunderbird, FossaMail uses Pale Moon's browser core as the backend, so that it depends more on the browser and not on Firefox.

While it offers features similar to Thunderbird, it is been optimized just like Pale Moon has been optimized. Also, it runs independent of Thunderbird as it uses its own profile folder. FossaMail is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit client for Windows and Linux.

 

New FossaMail maintainer

Moonchild announced that he is looking for a new maintainer for the project. The core reason given is that he is not able anymore to give "proper attention" to FossaMail,

As part of my investigation of work load and what I'm able to give proper attention, FossaMail has been falling through the cracks on more than a few occasions.

The new maintainer will get full ownership of the FossaMail brand and trademarks, and the domain name fossamail.org. In return, Moonchild has the following requirements for the new maintainer:

1. Keep the general spirit of the program (independent, vendor-neutral, mail, news and chat without in-app ads.
2. Keeping users safe by updating the program regularly with security updates.
3. Signing an agreement that binds the maintainer to the requirements.

One interesting tidbit of the decision is that the new maintainer may select a different codebase for FossaMail. Moonchild notes that there is no requirement to keep on using Pale Moon's backend for the messaging program.

It is unclear what is going to happen if no new maintainer is found. Since Moonchild cannot give FossaMail the attention the project deserves anymore, it could very well mean the end of the project. Another option is keeping it alive but doing only what is absolutely necessary, but that is probably the last desirable outcome for the current maintainer of the project.

If all things break down, users of FossaMail could probably migrate their email inboxes to Thunderbird.

Now You: Have you tried FossaMail?