What does Penelope need to move forward? : Eudora

Hi Folks,

First-time poster here, but long time user of eudora, and watcher of the
penelope Bug List. While I'm sure the developers of Penelope are making
heroic efforts, I believe that most would agree that, for those who
crave eudora features, the only solution is staying with, or moving back
to, Eudora 7.1.

I moved to TB when Eudora was proving unusable in a low-bandwidth, IMAP
situation. I have missed the session saving & mdi features of Eudora
more than anything else. The task queue also pains me to live without.

It absolutely STUNS me how lacking email clients are in their
feature-sets. Email clients must be one of the most used pieces of
software in the world, yet you can't close them and keep all your old
open messages available upon reopening! This is simply amazing to me.

So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?

I, along with a bunch of others I'm sure, think that Penelope is a very
important project that could use a little something to help. I'd
appreciate hearing what others think.

Thanks,
Allie

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:41:55 -0500, Allie <als_trash@hotmail.com>
declaimed the following in comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows:

>
> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
> much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
> of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?
>
Biggest problem, in my view... Penelope/"Eudora 8" are attempts to
patch the look of Eudora onto the existing Thunderbird code base rather
than starting over from scratch by reverse engineering Eudora with NO
prior code base.

For an attempt at the latter, see:
http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/odysseus/index.html

I'll consider dropping Eudora 6.x when I see Odysseus reach a decent
equivalence...
--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com wulfraed@bestiaria.com
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: web-asst@bestiaria.com)
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/

In article <gclqao$480q$1@usenet.osg.ufl.edu>, Allie
<als_trash@hotmail.com> wrote:

> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
> much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
> of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?


IMO, what's holding back "Penelope" is really "Thunderbird 3.0".

I don't think TB3 has officially even gone "beta 1" yet (the
latest-trunk downloads all still say "3.0b1pre" on them...)


The "penelope" developers probably have their hands tied somewhat until
TB3 progresses further...

- Steve

Steve Maser wrote:
> In article <gclqao$480q$1@usenet.osg.ufl.edu>, Allie
> <als_trash@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
>> much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
>> of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
>> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?
>
>
> IMO, what's holding back "Penelope" is really "Thunderbird 3.0".
>
> I don't think TB3 has officially even gone "beta 1" yet (the
> latest-trunk downloads all still say "3.0b1pre" on them...)
>
>
> The "penelope" developers probably have their hands tied somewhat until
> TB3 progresses further...
>
> - Steve

I've heard that, but... tomorrow will mark *2 years* since the last
Eudora release (7.1). I think it's legit to consider this
very-slow-moving at this point. While I'm sure the developers are doing
all they can given the circumstances (thus my question - how can we
change the circumstances?), I think there's not too much to show for a
2-year-old product (and I'm being kind). I find it hard to believe that
TB3 is really responsible for that.

allie

Steve Maser wrote:
> In article <gclqao$480q$1@usenet.osg.ufl.edu>, Allie
> <als_trash@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
>> much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
>> of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
>> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?
>
>
> IMO, what's holding back "Penelope" is really "Thunderbird 3.0".
>
> I don't think TB3 has officially even gone "beta 1" yet (the
> latest-trunk downloads all still say "3.0b1pre" on them...)
>
>
> The "penelope" developers probably have their hands tied somewhat until
> TB3 progresses further...
>
> - Steve

I've heard that, but... tomorrow will mark *2 years* since the last
Eudora release (7.1). I think it's legit to consider this
very-slow-moving at this point. While I'm sure the developers are doing
all they can given the circumstances (thus my question - how can we
change the circumstances?), I think there's not too much to show for a
2-year-old product (and I'm being kind). I find it hard to believe that
TB3 is really responsible for that.

allie

Steve Maser wrote:
> In article <gclqao$480q$1@usenet.osg.ufl.edu>, Allie
> <als_trash@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
>> much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
>> of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
>> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?
>
>
> IMO, what's holding back "Penelope" is really "Thunderbird 3.0".
>
> I don't think TB3 has officially even gone "beta 1" yet (the
> latest-trunk downloads all still say "3.0b1pre" on them...)
>
>
> The "penelope" developers probably have their hands tied somewhat until
> TB3 progresses further...
>
> - Steve

I've heard that, but... tomorrow will mark *2 years* since the last
Eudora release (7.1). I think it's legit to consider this
very-slow-moving at this point. While I'm sure the developers are doing
all they can given the circumstances (thus my question - how can we
change the circumstances?), I think there's not too much to show for a
2-year-old product (and I'm being kind). I find it hard to believe that
TB3 is really responsible for that.

allie

On Oct 10, 1:09 pm, Allie <als_tr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Maser wrote:
> > In article <gclqao$480...@usenet.osg.ufl.edu>, Allie
> > <als_tr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
> >> much more rapid clip?  Is it money?  People?  Both?  Changing the order
> >> of priorities?  What can we do?  Eudora was a great product and came
> >> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?
>
> > IMO, what's holding back "Penelope" is really "Thunderbird 3.0".
>
> > I don't think TB3 has officially even gone "beta 1" yet (the
> > latest-trunk downloads all still say "3.0b1pre" on them...)
>
> > The "penelope" developers probably have their hands tied somewhat until
> > TB3 progresses further...
>
> > - Steve
>
> I've heard that, but... tomorrow will mark *2 years* since the last
> Eudora release (7.1).  I think it's legit to consider this
> very-slow-moving at this point.  While I'm sure the developers are doing
> all they can given the circumstances (thus my question - how can we
> change the circumstances?), I think there's not too much to show for a
> 2-year-old product (and I'm being kind).  I find it hard to believe that
> TB3 is really responsible for that.

I'm not sure you understand what has happened with Eudora. It used to
be a Qualcomm product and was dropped from further development. They
were nice enough to release the sources to the public domain. So
there was some amount of time following the 7.1 release until the code
was opened up. Now volunteer developers are working to duplicate
Eudora based on TB code. Clearly the first real release is going to
take a while.

I feel lucky that Eudora has not just up and died!

rickman wrote:
> On Oct 10, 1:09 pm, Allie <als_tr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Steve Maser wrote:
>>> In article <gclqao$480...@usenet.osg.ufl.edu>, Allie
>>> <als_tr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> So my question is: what is it that Penelope needs to move forward at a
>>>> much more rapid clip? Is it money? People? Both? Changing the order
>>>> of priorities? What can we do? Eudora was a great product and came
>>>> from a private company - does Penelope need to be re-privatized somehow?
>>> IMO, what's holding back "Penelope" is really "Thunderbird 3.0".
>>> I don't think TB3 has officially even gone "beta 1" yet (the
>>> latest-trunk downloads all still say "3.0b1pre" on them...)
>>> The "penelope" developers probably have their hands tied somewhat until
>>> TB3 progresses further...
>>> - Steve
>> I've heard that, but... tomorrow will mark *2 years* since the last
>> Eudora release (7.1). I think it's legit to consider this
>> very-slow-moving at this point. While I'm sure the developers are doing
>> all they can given the circumstances (thus my question - how can we
>> change the circumstances?), I think there's not too much to show for a
>> 2-year-old product (and I'm being kind). I find it hard to believe that
>> TB3 is really responsible for that.
>
> I'm not sure you understand what has happened with Eudora. It used to
> be a Qualcomm product and was dropped from further development. They
> were nice enough to release the sources to the public domain. So
> there was some amount of time following the 7.1 release until the code
> was opened up. Now volunteer developers are working to duplicate
> Eudora based on TB code. Clearly the first real release is going to
> take a while.
>
> I feel lucky that Eudora has not just up and died!

It's true that I'm not familiar with all the details of the timeline of
the eudora code releases. So - how long has the code actually been
available then? Regardless, it's not just the "public" who is working
with Penelope as I understand it. Some of the Qualcomm developers are
working full time on it, no?

I absolutely feel like Eudora HAS just up and died! I'm glad that there
is a project like Odysseus that at least gives SOME hope of future
Eudora functionality in my lifetime. And I'm grateful that Qualcomm has
been as supportive of the transition as they have been. But I've lost
hope in Penelope. I hope I'm proven wrong. I'd like to be a *little*
more proactive than just giving up on Penelope though, and hence I'm
wondering about how to change things to let it succeed.

The debate here seems to be one of whether Penelope will, in any
reasonable timeline, actually bring about important eudora functionality
to Thunderbird if left in its current context. I would be happy to
reconsider my position if there were a list of accomplishments so far.
But as I understand it, Penelope is basically able to put a Eudora skin
on Thunderbird, and do some Eudora-settings imports. It also maps some
keys. In all this time, they haven't gotten out of stage 0.1 alpha.
What I consider to be important features (albeit a very self-centered
view) are *very* far down on the priority list in the bug list. The bug
list is long, and it's not getting shorter very quickly (that's an
understatement).

allie

On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:27:46 -0700 (PDT), rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com>
declaimed the following in comp.mail.eudora.ms-windows:


> I'm not sure you understand what has happened with Eudora. It used to
> be a Qualcomm product and was dropped from further development. They
> were nice enough to release the sources to the public domain. So

Qualcomm did NOT release sources to the public.

The FAQ states that Qualcomm was "moving Eudora to an open-source
development model" -- but NOT that they were releasing the existing
source code base. In essence, all that moved was the name "Eudora" to
the new developers who are now patching Thunderbird to look like Eudora.

http://www.linux.com/feature/119019
"""
Last fall, Qualcomm announced plans to join forces with the developers
of Mozilla's Thunderbird email client to produce an open source version
of Eudora. Since some code in the original Eudora client is proprietary,
engineers needed to rebuild the application from scratch.
"""
and
"""
Another point of clarification Beckley stresses is the source code
origins for Penelope and Eudora. "This project is being implemented with
no source code from the previous versions of Eudora. The original Eudora
source code contains some proprietary portions from third parties that
we are unable to distribute under open source. So there is no easy way
to 'move' features from Classic Eudora to the new Eudora/Penelope. All
changes have to be reimplemented."
"""

"Penelope" is a look&feel plug-in running on the established
Thunderbird base code. "Eudora 8" -- when it appears -- will be a
modified version of the Thunderbird code itself rather than a plug-in;
some of the more esoteric features of Eudora can not be done with a
plug-in, hence needing the TB code to be modified.

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com wulfraed@bestiaria.com
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: web-asst@bestiaria.com)
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/

On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:27:46 -0500, rickman wrote:

> I'm not sure you understand what has happened with Eudora. It used
> to be a Qualcomm product and was dropped from further development.

It's still a product being created basically by Qualcomm,
although development was sort of shifted to Mozilla's platform,
with the same developers (see below).

> They were nice enough to release the sources to the public domain.
> So there was some amount of time following the 7.1 release
> until the code was opened up. Now volunteer developers
> are working to duplicate Eudora based on TB code.

Eudora original source was never released to public domain
(parts of it do not even belong to Qualcomm,
none of it is cross-platform for Win/Mac, nor is any of it for Linux),
but some of the Qualcomm developers continued on Qualcomm's payroll
(working from Qualcomm offices, using Qualcomm servers)
with "Penelope/Eudora8" as their new project -- the latter is based on
Thunderbird's "open" source, which is what will remain "open source."

Although anyone can volunteer to contribute,
it takes much time to learn and become effective;
most people also need a paycheck from somewhere
to continue making a living while "volunteering,"
and infrastructure to work in and on, so most development
seems to have come from people and facilities
for which Qualcomm keeps paying
(how long will that continue, and has anyone yet moved on?)

Signs of life for Eudora are said to remain at Qualcomm,
although nothing new has been released since last February:
http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=13661

Original source it isn't
(some of the user forum posts below are also quite misinformed):
http://www.linux.com/feature/119019
http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=10559
http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=12966
http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?p=34319

--