Infinity Data Systems announced on Wednesday the launch of the Odysseus Project, a new e-mail application intended to succeed Eudora 6 and have full backwards compatibility with mail files and settings.
"We have always felt that Eudora is a best-of-breed e-mail application for both Mac OS X and Windows. Easily one of the oldest email applications, it still offers features either not found in competing applications or, if found, not implemented as elegantly.
"Needless to say, we were saddened by Qualcommis discontinuation of Eudora. And while we have the utmost respect for the Thunderbird/Eudora team, like many Eudora users, we donit believe that modifying Thunderbird to mimic Eudora offers Eudora users the features, functionality, or experience theyive come to love and depend on. Itis our belief that only an application written from the ground up can adequately succeed a program as great as Eudora," said Matt Milano, Infinity Project Manager.An initial beta of Odysseus is expected before the end of the year with a release planned for late Q1, 2008. Odysseus will offer full backwards compatibility with Eudora mail folders, settings, and improve on those areas where Eudora lagged behind such as HTML rendering and OS integration.
Those who wish to keep up with the development of Odysseus can register at the Infinity Data Systems Website to receive alerts.
On Tuesday, Mozilla announced the first beta of the Penelope Project, a merger of the Eudora 6.x look-and-feel and the existing Thunderbird 2 code base. The result is Eudora 8. This project, however, is stil limited by the underlying capabilities of Thunderbird 2.x. For example, there is no Mac OS X Address Book integration in Eudora 8.0.0b1.