Thunderbird doesn't use Ubuntu icon theme

Thunderbird's theme, as currently found in Gutsy (August 27, 07)

Evolution's icons for the same tasks look quite different.

Evolution and Nautilus both use the system's icon theme, Thunderbird does not.

Just as an example, compare Evolution and Thunderbird icons for "reply", "forward" or "new message" and compare the folder icons.

Moved to thunderbird package as mozilla-thunderbird is for 1.5 only.

I'm fairly sure mozilla won't allow Ubuntu to distribute thunderbird with Ubuntu icons and still call it Thunderbird, so I'm going to tentatively mark it "won't fix". If the mozilla team feels otherwise, please reopen this bug.

Ubuntu's Firefox package is also distributed with a Tango-based theme, activated by default, which looks rather different to the default Firefox GUI.

So why should they mind if Ubuntu does the same for Thunderbird?

There are three theme packages for Thunderbird that might apply, but all of them are outdated and need some work:

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/3946

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/2258
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/9458

Ok, just realized after a quick test:

Firefox adheres to GTK icon sets (and thus changes its icon theme with the GTK theme), but Thunderbird does not.

Therefore, Thunderbird doesn't need a Human/Tango theme package, but "simply" needs to follow the same GTK theme settings that Firefox already does.

Posted upstream as https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=494666

Sarah was correct. To use official icons we have to keep official branding all over the app icons, naming, ect...
Mozilla packages not using system wide GTK is another bug and has been reported in LP and upstream

see what upstream does

Upstream is marked as a duplicate. Adding new bug.

This was fixed upstream. Marking triaged pending release of Thunderbird 3 in Ubuntu.

This bug was fixed in the package thunderbird - 3.0+nobinonly-0ubuntu1

---------------
thunderbird (3.0+nobinonly-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New Upstream Release 3.0 (THUNDERBIRD_3_0_RELEASE)
    - LP: #50902 - Thunderbird displays useless dialog
    - LP: #52667 - Thunderbird doesn't support RFC-2369
    - LP: #49033 - Doesn't recognize upper case extension (.JPG)
    - LP: #56465 - Per folder column widths
    - LP: #68456 - CTRL-Shift-K bound to 2 functions
    - LP: #79337 - Typo in Server Information for Add Account Wizard
    - LP: #1084 - No scroll on full headers list
    - LP: #62071 - Middle click on scrollbar pastes instead of jumping
    - LP: #119358 - Weak default authentication mode
    - LP: #120672 - No option to empty junk folder with right click
    - LP: #96566 - movemail doesn't work with default privs
    - LP: #122529 - Non-Thunderbird IMAP folders not visible to Thunderbird
    - LP: #241276 - Not able to paste image into thunderbird compose window
    - LP: #244635 - scrollboxes scroll to offset 0 when resized
    - LP: #259387 - "Edit Message as New" broken for eml messages
    - LP: #120281 - Editing a message from the drafts folder leaves line breaks
    - LP: #115484 - Dialogue boxes too large for 1024x768 resolution
    - LP: #320034 - Mail with self referencing headers breaks threading
    - LP: #160794 - shortcuts different in windows and linux
    - LP: #280987 - thunderbird keeps asking a password when working off-line
    - LP: #369150 - Thunderbird splits email addresses with non-ascii characters
                    and a comma in From: field
    - LP: #135066 - Thunderbird doesn't use Ubuntu icon theme
    - LP: #297301 - after authentication error the password is forgotten
    - LP: #487541 - thunderbird-bin crashed with SIGSEGV (AFS filesystem)
    - LP: #485224 - Thunderbird saves double attachment file name endings on
                    FAT32 and NTFS
    - LP: #482496 - When using SCIM ANTHY, autosaving fails, and then get asked
                    about sending in UTF-8

  [ Fabien Tassin <email address hidden> ]
  * Add build-depends on autoconf2.13, autotolls-dev, mozilla-devscripts
    libglib2.0-dev (>= 2.12), libstartup-notification0-dev, libbz2-dev,
    libpixman-1-dev, libdbus-1-dev (>= 1.0.0), libdbus-glib-1-dev (>= 0.60),
    libhal-dev (>= 0.5.8), libasound2-dev, libreadline5-dev | libreadline-dev,
    libkrb5-dev
  * Update build-depends minimums for libx11-dev (>= 2:1.0),
    libgtk2.0-dev (>= 2.12), zlib1g-dev (>= 1:1.2.3), libpng12-dev (>= 1.2.0),
    libjpeg62-dev (>= 6b), libcairo2-dev (>= 0.5.8), libgnome2-dev (>= 2.16),
    libgnomevfs2-dev (>= 1:2.16), libgnomeui-dev (>= 2.16),
    libnss3-dev (>= 3.12.0~1.9b3)
  * Bump standards version to 3.8.0
  * Replace ${Source-Version} by ${binary:Version} in control file
    - update debian/control
  * Bump requirement for system nspr to >= 4.8 since Mozilla bug 492464 landed
  * Bump requirement for system nss to >= 3.12.3 since Mozilla bug 485052 landed
  * Use in-source hunspell when hunspell 1.2 is not available
  * Add conditionnal support for --with-libxul-sdk controlled by
    $(USE_SYSTEM_XUL)
    - update debian/rules
  * Add p...