Thread by @robertjhansen

Good news, everyone: Enigmail, the OpenPGP plugin for the Thunderbird email client, is being abandoned! Yaaaaaay!

Better news, everyone: it's because native OpenPGP support will be included in Thunderbird starting in version 78! YAAAAAAY! 1/

Enigmail for Thunderbird 68 is the final iteration of Thunderbird, and will continue to be supported for at least six months after the introduction of Thunderbird 78. You'll have at least six months to migrate. *WE ARE NOT ABANDONING OUR USERS*. 2/

We've been in discussions with Mozilla for literally *years* about getting OpenPGP supported natively within Thunderbird. We were sworn to secrecy and couldn't talk about this until it was official, but now it is, and I couldn't be happier about it.

*This*. *Is*. *Awesome*. 3/

Mozilla is moving away from the old XUL/XPCOM-based plugin model to the new WebExtension model. Support for the old model will be dropped in TB78. We would've had to completely rewrite Enigmail from scratch. So we are very grateful to Moz for their decision. 4/

I've used EM for seventeen years, and part of the loose group of official EM people for fifteen years. We've run a long, hard race on approximately no budget, appx. no sponsorships, and appx. no manpower.

And we've seen it through to the end, and that feels *awesome*. 5/

At the end of _Big Trouble in Little China_, Jack Burton asks the wizard Egg Shen what he'll do now that his life's mission is completed. Egg smiles and says, "Take a long vacation."

I understand Egg even better now. It sounds like a good plan. 6/

In closing: Enigmail is being EOLed. Future OpenPGP support will be integrated into Thunderbird. There will be at least a six-month transition period. *NO USERS ARE BEING ABANDONED.*

It's a new day, people. And new days are worth smiling about. :)

7/7 fin