Eudora (email client)
| Developer(s) | Qualcomm |
|---|---|
| Stable release | OSE 1.0
/ September, 13 2010 |
| Operating system | Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux[1] |
| Type | |
| License | Free software (Eudora OSE); earlier: Adware, payware, Light |
| Website | https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases , http://www.eudora.com |
Eudora /[invalid input: 'ju:']ˈdɔːrə/ is an e-mail client used on the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also supports several palmtop computing platforms, including Newton and the Palm OS. The software was named after American author Eudora Welty, because of her short story Why I Live at the P.O.[2][3] Eudora was developed in 1988 by Steve Dorner, who worked at the Computer Services Organization of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[4] Eudora was acquired by Qualcomm in 1991. In 2006 Qualcomm stopped development of the commercial version, and sponsored the creation of a new open-source version based on Mozilla Thunderbird, code-named Penelope.
History
Originally distributed for free, Eudora was commercialized and offered in a Light (freeware) and Pro (commercial) product. Between 2003 and 2006, the full-featured Pro version was also available as a "Sponsored mode" (adware) distribution.
Eudora (6.0.1) added support for Bayesian filtering of spam with a feature called SpamWatch. Eudora (6.2) added a scam watch feature that flags suspicious links within e-mails in an attempt to thwart phishing. Eudora (7.0) added Ultra-Fast Search, which finds any emails using single or multiple criteria in seconds.
Eudora has support for 'Stationery', a standard message or reply prepared ahead of time to a common question. Eudora stores e-mails in the mbox format, which uses plain text files instead of a database as Microsoft Outlook does. This allows the user to back up portions of their e-mail correspondence without backing up the entire database.
Eudora supports the POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols. Eudora also has support for SSL and, in Windows, S/MIME authentication, allowing users to sign or encrypt email communications for greatest security.
Eudora is noteworthy for its extensive variety of settings to customize its behavior, many of which are not available in the user interface but are accessed using numbered "x-eudora-setting" URIs that must be pasted into a message and clicked.[5]
At one time, Eudora also offered a webmail version at eudoramail.com. This service was run by Lycos as part of Mailcity, later renamed Lycos Mail. As of 2006, Eudoramail addresses for users still work (and are redirected to Lycos Mail accounts), but new users cannot sign up for the service.
Successors
On October 11, 2006, Qualcomm announced[6] that future versions of Eudora would be based on the same technology platform as Mozilla Thunderbird and be open source. The codename for this project is "Penelope".[7] Penelope is developed by the Mozilla Foundation, and the project is being led by the former Qualcomm team, including original developer Steve Dorner.
Penelope is available as an extension to Mozilla Thunderbird. The Paid mode commercial version of Eudora is no longer available as of May 1, 2007. The Light/Sponsored mode versions of Eudora continue to be available for download.
As of July 2, 2010, the name was changed to Eudora OSE (Open Source Edition) and the version number was reset to 1.0 when it was released.[8] From the beta 1.0 release candidate 1 readme.txt:
Beta versions of Eudora OSE were originally named just Eudora with a version
number of 8.0. This caused some confusion in that some users expected the new version to be a regular update to Classic Eudora. Since Eudora OSE uses an entirely different code base from Classic Eudora, in an effort to reduce the confusion the application was renamed to Eudora OSE (Open Source Edition). The version number was also reset to 1.0, which has the added benefit that it
is synchronized with the Penelope version number.
The first release version of Eudora OSE 1.0 became available on September 13, 2010.
Eudora OSE does not retain the original mbox data structure, which stores all attachments as individual files together in one folder. No software is currently developed/supported that can access old Eudora mail archives directly, without import/conversion.
Many Eudora users responded poorly[9] to the direction Penelope took. Similarly, reception to Eudora OSE continues to be lukewarm months after the release. As it stands, the intended updates[10] released in parallel with Thunderbird releases have not materialized and continue to lead to frustration in the Eudora community.
These frustrations are based on the fact that the Mozilla "Eudora" is only Eudora on the front end only. This does not constitute a classic OSE scenario for an expired product. (ie. Eudora 7's complete and actual code being made available for GPL or OSE development by a community of users).
Instead Thunderbird is given a Eudora skin, leaving the entire back-end to be Thunderbird/Mozilla. Part of Eudora's popularity was the ease of which utilities could be built for it. This encouraged users and businesses to adapt it to a variety of integrated solutions. Thunderbird's backend bears no resemblance to Eudora 6 or 7 whatsoever.
See also
References
- ^ Mozilla Wiki: Eudora Releases
- ^ "Why I Live at the P.O."
- ^ Eudora Background Documents
- ^ "[appletalk] Re: PopMail+GatorBox+MacTCP". comp.archives. 1990-07-09. USENET posting with Steve Dorner's announcement of Eudora.
- ^ X-Eudora-Settings URIs
- ^ Qualcomm Press Center- Qualcomm Launches Project in Collaboration with Mozilla Foundation to Develop Open Source Version of Eudora Email Program
- ^ Penelope - MozillaWiki
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope#Release_Cycle
External links
- Classic Eudora
- Eudora OSE 1.0
- MailForge (Formerly Odysseus), another eMail client intended to replicate the functionality of Eudora.