Earlier this fall, Scott MacGregor and David Bienvenu, two key members of Mozilla Thunderbird team left Mozilla without indicating their next move. It is becoming clear, that they are close to launching a new email-oriented start up, and a handful of other Mozilla folks such as Seth Spitzer are joining up this yet-to-be-named start-up. A clue to their plans comes from this blog post by David Ascher, CEO Designate of Thunderbird.

There are even at least two companies who are starting from the same technology platform that we are: SpiceBird, and whatever Scott, David, Sherman and Seth will be working on (don’t ask me what it is, I have no idea!).

The move shouldn’t come as a surprise given how much time the Thunderbird team spent on making it one of the best IMAP clients on the planet, especially on the Windows Platform. I have said this before, I think there is an opportunity to build a new kind of interaction client – desktop or web-based, doesn’t matter that allows for an enhanced user experience and encompasses the every increasing communication tools.

Related: Why we hate e-mail