Penelope brings Eudora to Linux

For most of us there are two polar approaches to reading and managing email. At the plain text end are the likes of mutt and pine. At the GUI end are the likes of Thunderbird and Evolution. Somewhere between, but on the GUI end of things, are Gmail and other browser-based approaches.

It's at the GUI end that the familiar three-panel layout has prevailed for some time. Rotating clockwise from the general to the particular, shortcuts and directories comprise the vertical left column (or columns), lists of emails fill the horizontal area on the top right, and the body of the currently opened email comprises the largest area on the bottom right.

Although Eudora has been credited with early modeling for this GUI standard, it defaults to giving emails and mailboxes their own windows, rather than squeezing both into the same window. The program has a raft of other approaches to email management and use that have earned it many awards and a loyal following that has persisted since Steve Dorner first developed it as UIUCMail at the University of Illinois in the late 1980s.

Eudora was freeware in its beginnings as a program for Macintosh (chosen as a platform because of its native TCP stack). In the '90s Qualcomm bought it, and offered it as both a free (as in beer) and commercial program until early this year when it moved over to the Mozilla project as a companion -- as well as an alternative -- to Thunderbird.

The important news for Linux users is that Eudora will become, like other Mozilla products, a multi-platform open source application. In other words, Eudora will come to Linux, and arrive full circle at its roots in the open world.

But first it is passing through a stage called Penelope. According to the Penelope wiki at Mozilla, the project "is committed to both preserving the Eudora user experience and to maintaining maximum compatibility, for both developers and users, with Thunderbird. It is our goal to build a single development community around Thunderbird and Eudora, so that both mailers advance faster than they previously have".

The commitment comes from Qualcomm, which continues to employ Steve Dorner and the entire core Eudora team. Look for developments at http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope.

- Doc Searls