The recently announced independence of Thunderbird- Mozilla’s free e-mail desktop client- has debuted under the wrong auspices: the only paid developers at Thunderbird have left the company.

The good news is that they will however remain involved in the continuous development of the software, but as free contributors.

Scott McGregor, one of the “founding fathers” of Thunderbird and David Bienvenu, module owner along with McGregor, have both announced their departure from the newly formed MailCo, Mozilla’s subsidiary focused on the development of the mail client.

David Bienvenu said that: “my last day at The Mozilla Corporation will be Oct. 12. I intend to stay involved with Thunderbird and to continue on as a module owner. I’ve enjoyed working at Mozilla a lot, and I wish Mozilla Co and the new Mail Co all the best.”

According to David Ascher, who is chief executive of the Thunderbird company, the two valuable programmers are apparently off to a new venture:

“My understanding from chats with them weeks ago (I hope I’m not divulging anything that I shouldn’t) is that they have decided to start a new venture.  They’ve worked on Thunderbird and its predecessors within Mozilla and Nestcape for a long time, and I can certainly understand their desire to do something different.  After all, I’m doing something different myself.  At the same time, I know from talking to Scott and David that they care very deeply about Thunderbird, and I look forward to working with them in the future.”

Ascher said also that MailCo is looking for replacements but hinted at the fact that the team there will experience some enlargements, considering that the company is also looking for non-programmers to fill in the gaps.