Penelope

Goals

The "Penelope" project's intention is to join the Eudora® user experience with the Mozilla platform. We intend to produce a version of Eudora that is open source and based on mozilla and Thunderbird. It's *not* our intention to compete with Thunderbird; rather, we want to complement it.

We are 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.

Roadmap

Our roadmap is as yet fairly indefinite. Part of the reason for that is we want feedback from you, the user community, on just what Eudora features are a priority for you. We will have two feedback releases before we make the first release intended for general use.

Current Status

The team is currently working on an extension that remaps keys and provides some other UI functionality. We will submit that as soon as we are comfortable with it.

Note that if you are a current Eudora user who wishes to give Thunderbird a try, the Thunderbird importers for Eudora are a bit rough, especially for MacOS users. It may be worth waiting to try to import your mail until we make some improvements to the importers.

Release 0.1

• Importers for your mail store and contacts
• Remapping of accelerator keys
• Basic settings and personalities

We expect this release to provide a bare minimum for Eudora users to feel comfortable, so that they can provide feedback and get involved in development.

Release 0.5

• Filter importing
• Major UI Elements
• Unique Eudora message handling operations

We expect this release to be useable by the most adventurous Eudora users.

Release 1.0

• Stationery
• Import for all Settings
• Minor UI elements

We expect this release to be comfortable for the vast majority of Eudora users.

The Future

Once we finish version 1.0, we will divide our attention between bringing over some of the more obscure Eudora features and customizations, and doing new work. We expect to track the Thunderbird roadmap, including calendar integration, and also to bring new ideas and capabilities to both mailers. We will flesh out this section of the roadmap based on user input.

Team Members

The core members of the Penelope project are currently:

• Steve Dorner, QUALCOMM®, original author of Eudora for Macintosh
• Jeff Beckley, QUALCOMM, original co-author of Eudora for Windows
• Dale Wiggins, QUALCOMM, longtime Eudora developer
• Geoffrey Wenger, QUALCOMM, longtime Eudora developer
• Matt Dudziak, QUALCOMM, longtime Eudora project manager
• Mark Charlebois, QUALCOMM, Linux developer and Thunderbird user

Get Involved

The Penelope project is in its infancy, so please be patient while we get our act together.

If you'd like to be a tester of Penelope, please watch this page; we'll be sure to let you know when we have something worth trying

If you'd like to help develop Penelope, either watch this page or send one of the team members an email.

QUALCOMM Involvement

Eudora has been a QUALCOMM product for many years. QUALCOMM continues to have a keen interest in the users of Eudora [Not true. Qualcomm has not cared about Eudora for years. Qualcomm's annual revenue is $7G USD. Eudora doesn't even rate a footnote in the latest 10K.], and is being kind enough to donate the time of the above staff members to the Penelope project.

Stuff the Lawyers Insist Be Said

QUALCOMM and Eudora are registered trademarks of QUALCOMM Incorporated