It doesn't seem that conceptually different from what companies do with products like Blender, where sponsoring more development on an existing product is better than rolling an in-house version. That seems to me like about the best acquisition goal that they could have - basically saying, "what exists is good, instead of building our own thing let's just pour resources into what exists." Thunderbird isn't acquiring K-9 to kill it or merge with an additional product, they're buying it so they can increase its development speed and then put their name on it. Since K-9 Mail is not available on iOS, it means that the team will have to start from scratch for Apple platforms, or look for another open source mail client on iOS to acquire and use it as a base to kickstart their operations.I get skeptical about acquisitions, but from what I can tell this actually seems like decent news. Mozilla concludes by mentioning that they also have plans for bringing Thunderbird to the iPhone and iPad. However, Mozilla is warning potential users that the interface will likely change a few times as they continue with the development. You can already get the Thunderbird experience by downloading the K-9 Mail app now. The team notes other features present on Thunderbird that are non-email including calendars, tasks, feeds etc, will not be in the mobile app at the start, however, they are still debating on how best to port them over. The changes that Mozilla aims to bring to K-9 Mail in the short term include improved folder management, the same account autoconfiguration as Thunderbird on desktop, message filters, and some level of synchronization between desktop and mobile using Firefox Sync. As time passes, the developers behind the two platforms will transform the existing K-9 Mail app for Android into Thunderbird for Android as part of their vision to offer the open-source community a more powerful and privacy-respecting email experience on mobile devices.
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