Eudora reborn as open source

Eudora, a pioneering e-mail program named after author Eudora Welty, is rising from a technical grave as an open source program after owner Qualcomm Inc quit selling the product in May. Eudora routinely got strong reviews from computer magazines and had a loyal user base, but commercially it was overshadowed by software that Microsoft Corp included with new PCs, IBM's Lotus software & Web e-mail programs. Qualcomm donated Eudora to the open source community, which means that anybody is free to download and use it without paying for the product. Developers can also access the code, change it & share those changes. On August 31, the Mozilla Foundation started distributing a test open source version of Eudora, which was developed in the late 80s as one of the first e-mail programs by a student at the University of Illinois. Eudora is not yet promoting the product on its homepage, as it does its other titles, including its popular Mozilla Browser - a rival to Microsoft's Internet Explorer - and Thunderbird, another e-mail program. The new version of Eudora is being developed under the codename Penelope and is available on the Web at http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope. Mozilla has said it plans to develop both Eudora & Thunderbird. - Reuters