The FOSS Force Readers’ Poll
The results of our latest poll have been tallied and FOSS Force readers evidently think that Mozilla should keep Thunderbird instead of helping the project find a new home. Mozilla executive chairperson, Mitchell Baker, announced on November 30 that the foundation intended to eventually separate itself from the popular desktop email client it first released in 2004.
The organization announced yesterday that after three years development, it’s also quitting Firefox OS as a mobile operating system, although it will continue as an IoT OS.
Our non-scientific poll asked the simple question: Should Mozilla Spin-off Thunderbird? Three answers were offered: Yes, No, and I don’t know. No “other” option was offered. Respondents were limited to only one of the available answers and voting was limited to one vote per visitor, enforced both by IP address and a simple non-tracking cookie.
The results? An overwhelming majority, 67.5 percent or 79 votes, of those taking our poll indicated they thought Mozilla should keep Thunderbird in-house with a “no” vote. Those thinking that the email client should be spun-off to a new home with a “yes” vote were in second place with 19.7 percent or 23 votes, followed closely by those who voted “I don’t know” — 12.8 percent or 15 votes.
Probably the most telling figure from this poll, however, isn’t to be found in the poll’s answers but in the small number of our visitors who bothered to take the poll. Only 117 people took the poll, putting it well within the bottom 5 percent of the polls we’ve conducted on FOSS Force. Perhaps this lack of participation was best explained by tracyann in a comment to our article on Mozilla’s plans to quit Thunderbird, where we introduced the poll: “The options in the poll ‘Should Mozilla Spin-Off Thunderbird’ are Yes, No, I Don’t Know. I voted ‘I Don’t Know’ because there was no ‘I Don’t Care’ option.”
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