Thunderbird currently runs entirely on donations, even though they have paid products in the pipeline.

I think a piece of software running on donations is not running off "charity". It's just a business model to not charge every user. Similar to how Twitch streamers operate, or my local theater group.

You can read how they spent money in 2024 [1].

[1] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-...

Thanks, that's helpful. This says about ~70% of the money was paid to employees, ~10% infra costs, the other ~20% various other fees and smaller expenses.

It would be interesting to have a breakdown of what part of the Thunderbird team is working on Thunderbird, Thunderbolt, or other forms of thunder.

No, this was built with money from an grant from Mozilla.

No what? That doesn't contradict their comment about Thunderbird.

I think "No, this was not funded by donations".

Wait what, they took donations to pay a team to build a mail client and had them build an AI thing instead? Or have I got that wrong.

No, this was built with money from an grant from Mozilla.

I don’t know why you’re downvoting, it’s a fair question based on the above comments.