Thank you for this!
To paraphrase Mozilla: It's for individuals that do NOT always want the latest features, performance enhancements and technologies in their email client. 
Do you plan on Portable Apps releases for 10.0.5 thru 10.0.8?
Cheers.
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We will be supporting ESR of both Firefox and Thunderbird ongoing. They are not intended for individuals at all, though, really, and I'd wager that many extensions will not support it on an ongoing basis. It's really only intended for companies and universities that need to peg specific web apps, email apps or extensions to a non-moving target on an ongoing basis as these types of organizations need to spend months validating a piece of software before rolling it out. As a result, Mozilla purposely makes the ESR downloads hard to find on their website.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
True on the extensions thing. I only use two, Lightning and Xnote and the current versions (1.2.3 and 2.2.7) for TBird 10 work just fine and now I believe I don't have to worry about them or my email client until well into 2013 when I'll be consider TBird 17 ESR. Otherwise, I could care less about extensions and, as I said, the latest features, performance enhancements and technologies. While I fully understand Mozilla's ESR strategy, I don't believe I am the only "individual" who recognizes its merit. And who is fed up with the rapid reload, uh release, schedule and wondering how soon after a .0 release the .1 will show up.
Enough said.
Good to know of your continuing support for the portable ESR model. Looks like another good reason to send in a donation.
Again, thank you.
Keep in mind that the ESR and standard versions of Firefox and Thunderbird are on exactly the same release schedule. A new version will be released every 6 weeks. Whenever there are any severe security issues, an unscheduled update will be released. So, you update exactly as often whether you are on ESR or standard. On standard it's a new X.0 version while on ESR it's a new 10.0.X version. Being fed up with rapid releases is not a reason to use ESR as ESR doesn't save you any updating. That's why I did the blog post about it and made the above comment.
There's a common misconception that ESR means you update less. Many are also under the mistaken impression that holding onto Firefox 3.6 meant less updates, too, and that ESR is a replacement for it. It isn't. And Firefox 3.6 had an update, on average, every 4 weeks throughout its life.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks for your continued input. There are those who might be following this thread who will benefit from the finer points you clarify here. We are discussing an email client. The rapid release plan for Firefox is has validity considering the competition Mozilla faces to present the Latest and Greatest to the masses.
That said, I know I said "enough said" up there, but...
"Being fed up with rapid releases is not a reason to use ESR..."
We will have to agree to disagree on this for an email client. While I fully understand there are those who chomp at the bit for a new CSS Style Inspector, 3D Transforms for anti-aliasing or that ground work for future releases, I believe, again, that I am not alone in thinking... let's see if I can maintain decorum here: The ESR is also for individuals who don't give a flying rat's derriere about the latest features, performance enhancements and technologies - for an email client.
"...as ESR doesn't save you any updating."
True from the standpoint of timeline and (if all goes well) work expended, but I think I did a good job of understanding the ESR Overview at
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/organizations/faq/
in that when I *update* to TBird 10.0.8 in 2013, odds are pretty much 99.9% in my favor Lightning events will be intact as will the 100s of Xnotes I've attached to emails. (Versions 13 thru 16 and the viability of any associated add-ons? A roll of the dice, absolutely.) At that point, the *new version* TBird 17 will have been around long enough to consider its value. Especially since a Windows 8 box will be in the budget by then.
Don't get me wrong. I love Mozilla - been using Thunderbird since version i.forget (and Firefox since Phoenix 0.5), making several donations to their cause over the years. But I have absolutely no use whatsoever for the rapid release plan. Which is why I so welcomed the opportunity to blow away v12 and go with v10 ESR.
Thanks again for your support of their ESR model.
Just to clarify, you are correct that no new features will be given to ESR. I would guess, however, that extensions may become more of an issue on ESR than on mainline, though. That's always been my concern with it. Most extensions developers will ONLY test and build on mainline Firefox and Thunderbird (currently 12.0), so there may be issues with 10.0 that will be missed. And I think these issues could become worse over time as there is more of a difference between them. Only time will tell, of course. I think the fact that 10.0 and up uses the same base for extensions may alleviate that a bit.
I've been using Lightning since 0.9 and it's always just kept working through upgrades of TB. I expect it to continue through 2013
One Note on timing: We may be upgrading ESR to 17.x before the 10.0 end of life. We just need to figure out when. Overlapping 2 versions on the same channel (AppID in our case, ThunderbirdPortableESR) is not possible, so we'll likely switch it in the PortableApps.com Updater/App Store a few weeks into the 12 week overlap between 10 and 17 and have 17 available as ThunderbirdPortableESRNext before that for folks testing it out.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!