Users of Thunderbird who are on older versions of Windows or macOS will lose the ability to receive program updates beginning next month.
The Thunderbird development team has confirmed that support will officially come to an end as scheduled. As a result, the release of Thunderbird 115.15.0 this month will be the last major update available for these operating systems.
Firefox Extends Support, But Thunderbird Does Not
Mozilla faced a similar predicament with its Firefox web browser but decided to extend its support. Given that Thunderbird is built on the same codebase as Firefox, the developers of both applications encountered comparable issues.
Mozilla has chosen to extend the support for Firefox, meaning that users on the affected operating systems will benefit from an additional six months of assistance.
The Thunderbird team has outlined three key reasons for its decision to discontinue support:
- Declining usage: About 11 percent of Firefox users are on Windows 7 or Windows 8 / 8.1, whereas only 6 percent of Thunderbird users are affected in the same way.
- Resources for the Thunderbird team are limited, and prolonging support would mean reallocating essential resources away from other projects.
- Microsoft has ended support for these operating systems.
Clearly, the Thunderbird development team is considerably smaller than that of Firefox, which is a valid consideration. Nevertheless, a 6 percent usage figure still signifies a substantial number of users. If the total user base hovers around 10 million, this suggests that around 600,000 users could be adversely affected by this decision.
Though Thunderbird will remain functional after support ends, it will no longer receive updates, including vital security patches. There is a chance that bugs or other issues could arise, potentially affecting some functionalities of the email client.
This decline may not occur right away, but as technology evolves, it is likely that certain features could stop working over time.
Users unable to upgrade their systems at this point may continue to access their email accounts via online options. However, very few email clients still support Windows 7 or 8. Postbox is compatible only with Windows 8, while MailSpring reportedly supports Windows 7.
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