Betterbird: Former maintainer

Why former maintainer?

Long story, here's a short summary. Jörg became involved in Thunderbird after a disastrous release of version 31 in 2014. During 2015 he learned his craft on the project, and in December 2015 he obtained "Level 3" access to all Mozilla repositories. He became a Thunderbird module peer in September 2016. During 2016, 2017 and much of 2018 he kept the project alive by tirelessly adapting the code base to the endless string of changes in the Mozilla platform on which Thunderbird is based. In November 2016, after Thunderbird had started picking up donations, he became the projects first employee. After Mozilla outsourced contracting to an external labour provider in early 2018 and Jörg wasn't happy with the conditions there, he was kindly funded by the pEp Project. Note that Thunderbird's technical director only came on board in 2018.

The following paragraph shows how so-called cancel culture was used weaponising the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines to expel someone striving for excellence, user satisfaction and accountability within the project.

In early 2020, Thunderbird's financial and administrative home became MZLA, no longer a non-profit organisation. Hence pEp didn't want to pump money into a for-profit organisation and asked the Thunderbird project to refund Jörg's work at Thunderbird. At the beginning of 2020 the project let Jörg go, and in August 2020 he was ousted from the Thunderbird Council(*), of which he had been a member since 2016, and temporarily banned from the Thunderbird community. He was subsequently banned for life(*) from the entire Mozilla Community based on alleged infringements of the unacceptable conditions set out in the initial ban.
(*) PDF download, if you know how to open it in a tab, let us know.

If you require more information on the topic, we're glad to answer any questions. Contact us via e-mail.

But let's not look back, let's look forward into a bright future. During his time at the Thunderbird project, Jörg managed releases of Thunderbird 52, 60 and 68, and as a volunteer helped to improve the quality of Thunderbird 78 being the most prolific regression reporter until his expulsion from the community. Now he has taken matters into his own hands and will deliver the best experience on the planet with Betterbird.