I use K-9 today, and I would like to see K-9 get more resources and to get more parity with other clients. So with any acquisition there's some cause for caution, but overall I am inclined to be pretty optimistic about this. The main difference being that K-9 is not independent now, the companies that do this with Blender don't end up owning Blender. 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.

I get skeptical about acquisitions, but from what I can tell this actually seems like decent news.

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