Eudora is the Norwegian Blue of Software

ONE OF the oldest email software programs is being pulled from sale after 18 years on the market.

Eudora started sending mail when the Internet was still in short trousers, but its owner Qualcomm thinks that the only reason it is still on its perch is because it has nailed it there.

The latest Eudora release will be its last and that is being flogged at a cut-rate price of $19.95 with six months technical support.

Later versions of Eudora will incorporate code from Thunderbird and any new versions will be based entirely on Thunderbird code and free.

Eudora first appeared in 1988 and was penned by a chap called Steve when he was a computer programmer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He named it after the novelist Eudora Welty.

Qualcomm bought Eudora in 1991 and hired Dorner to make the program work on the Apple OS and Microsoft Windows. Interest in the software peaked in the early 1990s but still has a hard core following.

Qualcomm thinks that these days people are not interested in handing over cash for stand alone email packages. These days they have to be integrated, or free, or else punters are not interested.

More here. µ