Eudora embraces Open Source

The popular email program Eudora joins hands with Mozilla and Thunderbird.

Internet's popular mail application Eudora has gone the Open Source way. Back in 1988 when it was born, Eudora was the most popular and widely used email application. Eudora initiated the concept of always-present folder list pane. In 1991 it was acquired by Telecommunications technology company Qualcomm. But of late it was keeping a low profile. Qualcomm, which has owned Eudora for 15 years, said that a new version of Eudora would be built on top of Thunderbird, the open-source e-mail client that belongs to Mozilla. The company also said they don't intend to remain in the e-mail market because it is not in line with core business or strategic goals. Mozilla said that they are excited for Eudora to be returning to the open source community and are pleased to welcome Eudora and its million of users to the world.

Eudora started to loose its ground to online email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. It also started to loose the battle against applications that come bundled free with operating systems like Microsoft's Outlook and Apple's Mail. Eudora just had to do something to survive. The timely switch to a Thunderbird-based application will give them the much-needed support. It will offer some vital infrastructure improvements, including a cross-platform code base and improved display engine. The Mozilla- Eudora project is code named Penelope. Six programmers from Qualcomm are likely to work on this project. This project will involve preserving some of Eudora's unique personality and bringing in Thunderbird's latest offerings. It is still not clear which elements of Eudora will be carried to the new version based on Thunderbird. There is one thin which users might want to take note of. Qualcomm agreed that they would be able to provide technical support for the free version. Users will need to get information from informal open source support channels like mailing lists and forums.

Qualcomm exactly knows what it wants out of the new avatar of Eudora. The company said "It should look like, feel like, act like Eudora". They also assured that they would try and maintain as much features as possible. They wanted the Eudora to evolve with Open Source. The Penelope projects have a few goals to achieve. It plans to include Eudora keyboard shortcuts and software to import current Eudora settings and stored messages in the initial 0.1 Version. Version 1.0 will also have features to import all Eudora settings, and will support preformatted e-mail templates called stationery. Meanwhile, on Wednesday Qualcomm released launched its last commercial editions of Eudora, version 7.1 for Windows and 6.2.4 for Mac OS X. The 12 months support would no longer be available for this software. Instead, they will have six months of support. The company said they would stop selling them when the new and improved Eudora arrives. Qualcomm is hoping to release the new software in the first half of next year. Till that time they will keep selling current versions of its application. 

This is indeed a welcome move from Qualcomm, as it will allow Eudora to evolve with the help of the open source community will continue to maintain and improve the client. 

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