This may be of use to those of you who maintain and support Thunderbird in your enterprise. The project appears to be open to community development, though.
and from the mouth of the horse:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/
I hate to see this happen. Thunderbird was a great alternative mail/news client in Windows. Looks like they'll be doing ESR support like they do with "old" Firefox builds.
Since many manage Thunderbird in Patch Manager, I thought this would be of interest.
Thanks!
Jay