Not gonna lie, I was super confused why F-Droid was updating thunderbird beta on my device when I was updating apps a few days ago. Took me a while to realize k9 was apparently changed to thunderbird beta.
Apparently that is only a metadata issue that should be fixed soon™. The installed app is still k9 https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/issues/8478
Oh… Well, too late for me. Ended up uninstalling it and replacing it with thunderbird because I thought they were rebranding it to thunderbird beta.
The two apps are identical and built from the same codebase anyway. K-9 is just a branding asset swap.
I’ve seen conflicting info from Thunderbird devs on how long they actually intend to keep both branding packages active. I’ve heard no longer than a year. I’ve heard only as long as it takes to get Thunderbird out of beta. I’ve heard they have some sort of agreement with FDroid that obligates them to keep it listed for some minimum duration of time (???). I’ve most recently heard indefinitely, because their build script is just a toggle now and it costs them nothing. Which one do I believe? I have no idea. I doubt K-9 will be kept around in perpetuity, though.
According to someone else who replied to my comment, it seems it’s some sort of metadata issue rather than an actual rebrand. I’m just an idiot who doesn’t actually look deep enough into this kinda stuff.
in any case, if its updating the old app to the new one that is still massively annoying. the new UI is nearly unusable for me since I usually use apps with one hand.
