In a bit of nostalgia, I recently read the short story Why I Live at the P.O., by southern writer Eudora Welty. The humorous and quirky story led to the naming of one of my favorite pieces of software, an esteemed E-mail program, by its original developer back in the late 1980s.
And the nostalgia was for the passing of Eudora, the software.
Qualcomm, a California company that owns Eudora, last fall said it would no longer develop or sell the software after version 7.1, which it released at the same time. Primarily in the business of selling chips for cellphones, Qualcomm always seemed an odd parent for Eudora. I was reminded of the decision this week when Eudora, for some peculiar reason, offered me its latest and last update free of charge.
Hope is not lost, as Qualcomm released the software to open-source volunteers to use and improve. Eudora might again thrive by sharing code and features with Thunderbird, an E-mail program being developed at the open-source Mozilla project.
Still, it seems like a crapshoot. My fear is that Eudora will effectively disappear, and it's more than nostalgia. No mail program I've tried matches Eudora's filters, which every day automatically file or otherwise dispose of scores of E-mails for me.
At the least, I've not found a way to move my Eudora filters. That means I'd be rewriting them in a new E-mail program, having to again process every missive, and feeling, like Sister, the protagonist in Welty's story, that I'd moved full-time to the P.O.
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