Eudora is going open source — it'll be based on Thunderbird, the email client from the Mozilla foundation, the folks who run the Firefox project.
QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), a leading developer and innovator of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and other advanced wireless technologies, and the Mozilla Foundation, a public-benefit organization dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the Internet, today announced that future versions of Eudora® will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird™ email program. Future versions of Eudora will be free and open source, while retaining Eudora's uniquely rich feature set and productivity enhancements. QUALCOMM and Mozilla will each participate in, and continue to foster development communities based around the open source Mozilla project, with a view to enhancing the capabilities and ease of use of both Eudora and Thunderbird. QUALCOMM also today announced that it has released the final commercial versions of the current Eudora products for Windows and Mac operating systems. The open source version of Eudora is targeted to release during the first half of calendar year 2007. Once the open source version of Eudora is released, QUALCOMM will cease to sell Eudora commercially. In the interim, QUALCOMM will continue commercial sales, at a reduced price of $19.95 and with a six-month period of technical support. Existing technical support commitments will be honored in their entirety.