Rust can be stand alone, Thunderbird is already stand alone and the way Mozilla handled that pretty much killed Thunderbird in the marketplace.
I also think that Thunderbird's position can no longer qualify for the adjective 'huge' when coupled with community value, it is well below 1% of the market.
After using it for years I gave up because the bugs were no longer fixed timely, the performance simply terrible and the upgrades were just as likely to cause you trouble as they were to fix something.
Rust has the future, I'm pretty convinced about that. It will take a very long time to materialize, but let's be honest here: without FireFox Rust would have never even seen the light of day, it only exists because a large amount of money earmarked for FireFox was diverted into developing Rust which led to further diminished marketshare for FireFox. The breaking change around plug-ins was another big negative in the near past.
I also think that Thunderbird's position can no longer qualify for the adjective 'huge' when coupled with community value, it is well below 1% of the market.
After using it for years I gave up because the bugs were no longer fixed timely, the performance simply terrible and the upgrades were just as likely to cause you trouble as they were to fix something.
Rust has the future, I'm pretty convinced about that. It will take a very long time to materialize, but let's be honest here: without FireFox Rust would have never even seen the light of day, it only exists because a large amount of money earmarked for FireFox was diverted into developing Rust which led to further diminished marketshare for FireFox. The breaking change around plug-ins was another big negative in the near past.