I don't want to discount your experience and preferences. I hear and understand that you are using desktop email less frequently. I use desktop email extensively, and I suspect others do as well.
I do not know where Mozilla sourced the metric of "25 million users," but let's assume it is within the right order of magnitude. Even if that number is projected to fall, it's sufficient to warrant significant resource investment. I'd argue, as I did above, that the mission statement of Mozilla aligns well with email, so from my perspective a healthy full-time development team seems reasonable for this product category. I don't want Mozilla ceding desktop email as it did desktop browsing; and I especially don't want Mozilla by way of inaction helping cede email generally to centralized alternatives.
Your concern about desktop clients is an echo of Mozilla's challenge with web browsers—namely, they can't achieve a solid foothold on mobile because mobile is (currently) a walled garden. Until that is sorted out, Mozilla should redouble effort in the desktop space, where it is strongest. But for whatever it's worth, having not yet seen something like PAO [1] from Microsoft, I would love to see Mozilla move in that direction.
I do not know where Mozilla sourced the metric of "25 million users," but let's assume it is within the right order of magnitude. Even if that number is projected to fall, it's sufficient to warrant significant resource investment. I'd argue, as I did above, that the mission statement of Mozilla aligns well with email, so from my perspective a healthy full-time development team seems reasonable for this product category. I don't want Mozilla ceding desktop email as it did desktop browsing; and I especially don't want Mozilla by way of inaction helping cede email generally to centralized alternatives.
Your concern about desktop clients is an echo of Mozilla's challenge with web browsers—namely, they can't achieve a solid foothold on mobile because mobile is (currently) a walled garden. Until that is sorted out, Mozilla should redouble effort in the desktop space, where it is strongest. But for whatever it's worth, having not yet seen something like PAO [1] from Microsoft, I would love to see Mozilla move in that direction.
[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao