Qualcomm is making the decision to end development on the proprietary version of Eudora and change things to include code from Thunderbird, the free, open source email software by Mozilla. Eudora will now be based entirely on Thunderbird code and will be free to all users.

In the past. Qualcomm was known for bringing CDMA technology used by mobile phones and is now taking these steps with Eudora to make a shift in their development ideals. The latest Eudora release, version 7.1, is the last Eudora release. It will be made available for only $19.95 and will include only six months of tech. support.

The Eudora software, by Steve Dorner, was created in 1988 when he was attending the University of Illinois and it was named after a writer, Eudora Welty. After being bought out in 1991 by Qualcomm, the software was worked on and made compatible with other systems like the Microsoft OS and Mac OS. This paved the way for Eudora to be used more widely and Qualcomm was successful in marketing the product for some time.

If Qualcomm does this it will open the doors for marketing other software packages that they offer. Making their email software free to users is really their only choice as there are so many open source and free email packages available today, the market is saturated. I feel this decision will give Qualcomm an opportunity to focus on other ventures and still keep their name and reputation solid.

Good move, Qualcomm.