I’m very excited to share the following news: Dan Mosedale (dmose to his IRC friends) has agreed to help me launch MailCo. For those of you who don’t know Dan, you should know that he’s been involved in Mozilla since the early days, and has contributed significantly both to Thunderbird and to the Calendar project. I can’t think of a better person to help lead me this project. Not only does he have the coding and architectural chops to help lead the code from a strictly technical point of view, but Dan also has a great rapport with the community, understands what it takes to mentor new contributors and guide them through the various stages of involvement, and shares my ambition for what Thunderbird can become.
The current plan is that he’ll be working with me and the rest of the MailCo staff (being recruited as I write) for the next four months at least, bringing his expertise and knowledge to bear on everything from roadmap and product planning, hiring, community leadership, and whatever else I can throw his way.

As he’s currently working on important Firefox 3 features, we’ll find a transition plan which works well both for Thunderbird and Firefox. I’m expecting a gradual transition, as I know that I want Firefox 3 to succeed as much as the Firefox team wants Thunderbird to succeed.

Now Dan, about the demorkification project…