Qualcomm has announced that it will be handing over the development of its e-mail client Eudora to Mozilla Foundation to run it on the latter's Thunderbird application.
Qualcomm said that it is planning to keep selling the classic Eudora package for $19.95 until Mozilla releases the new-look Eudora in the first half of 2007.
Steve Dorner, vice president of technology at Eudora said the move to open-source would provide Eudora with plenty of infrastructure improvements that include enhancements to its display engine. "Making it open source will bring more developers to bear on Eudora than ever before," he said.
The combined project of Mozilla and Eudora is called Penelope. Qualcomm said that six of its programmers were working on it. Analysts said the move to make Eudora open-source made sense for Qualcomm, since desktop software was never its forte.
"Eudora hasn't had a bright future for some considerable time--it's hardly been a shining star on Qualcomm's balance sheet...This will move Eudora users onto a more stable code platform (and) one that's being actively developed," Ferris Research analyst Richi Jennings told CNET.
Qualcomm spokesman Jeremy James stressed that people must note that the company would not provide technical support for the new client. Users must use the open-source gateway to get their problems solved. However he also said that the new client would not differ greatly from the prevailing one in terms of looks.
"The goal is to not only maintain as much as possible the feature and user experience consistency, but also, using the open-source community, to continue to evolve the software," he said.
Eudora was created in 1988 and in the early days of the Internet dominated its sector. It was acquired by Qualcomm in 1991.
