Eudora

Qualcomm announced plans on October 11, 2006 to produce a open source version of Eudora based on Thunderbird, and that once it was available to stop selling Eudora commercially. The effort to migrate Eudora to a Thunderbird-based application is called the Penelope project. Besides the Eudora branded version of Thunderbird they are developing a Penelope extension that can be used with Mozilla Thunderbird.

The Eudora installer includes the Penelope extension. Most features in the Penelope extension work with Mozilla Thunderbird but a few supposedly require Eudora in order to work correctly. The three IMAP specific enhancements are not implemented in Penelope. None of the commercial Eudora source code will be used in either deliverable.

Qualcomm has five developers and a project manager working on this project. For comparison, there are only two full time Thunderbird developers. The Eudora beta releases support Windows and OSX, its not clear if they will eventually support Linux or not. Bugs are reported in Mozilla's Bugzilla database just like Thunderbirds.

This article has a screen shot of Thunderbird 2 Beta 2 with the Penelope extension installed and enabled.

If you install Eudora it will automatically find and use your default Thunderbird profile (if it exists).

External links

• Qualcomm's Eudora forums has two forums for Penelope.
• Eudora key bindings
• Mozillazine article on future Eudora versions based on Mozilla Thunderbird
• Nostalgy addon re-creates Eudora's Alt-Click
• Open Source Eudora releases
• Penelope extension releases
• Penelope project on the Mozilla wiki
• Qualcomm sets the record straight on Penelope (Hint: it's not Eudora 8)