Qualcomm's Eudora to get open source makeover

Telecommunications tech company Qualcomm is rebuilding its Eudora email program using open source Thunderbird software from the Mozilla Foundation.

In the 1990s, Eudora caught on as a popular program for sending and receiving email. But Qualcomm "has decided not to remain in the email market because it is not in alignment with the core business or strategic goals", the San Diego-based company said.

On Wednesday, Qualcomm launched its last commercial editions of Eudora, version 7.1 for Windows and 6.2.4 for Mac OS X. These cost $19.95, as opposed to about $50 - the price of the last release. The lower-priced software includes six months of support instead of the regular 12 months the company offered earlier.

In the future, customers will be offered no-cost versions of Eudora based on the Thunderbird email application. Those programs, to be released in the first half of 2007, will be open source and freely available, Qualcomm said. The company won't provide technical support for that version, though, according to a spokesman - people will need to use more informal open source support channels, such as mailing lists and forums.

It's not yet clear which elements of the current Eudora will be brought to the Thunderbird-based version, said the spokesman, but the goal is continuity for users. "It should look like, feel like, act like Eudora," he said. "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."

The roots of Thunderbird are in Mozilla software, which originated as the Netscape Navigator package and included a web browser and an email reader. That project has been split into two parts: the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email software.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com