Ars Technica is reporting that Qualcomm, the parent company of Eudora, which produces the venerable email client Eudora for both Windows and Mac OS X, has decided to join forces with the Mozilla Foundation, the organisation reponsible for the open source Firefox web browser, and make their mail client open source as of next year.

The new Eudora will be based on the Thunderbird platform, but will retain its "uniquely rich feature set and productivity enhancements." When completed, the open source Eudora will be free to the public.

In addition to the open source announcement, Qualcomm also released its final commercial versions of Eudora—Eudora 7.1 for Windows and Eudora 6.2.4 for Mac OS X.

[...] Steve Dorner, vice president of technology for QUALCOMM's Eudora Group and original founder of the software in 1988, said, "using the Mozilla Thunderbird technology platform as a basis for future versions of Eudora will provide some key infrastructure that the existing versions lacked, such as a cross-platform code base and a world-class display engine."

The reason, of course, is that there's hardly a solitary cent to be made in this market anymore. And turning the whole thing, and the last remaining users, over to the open source machine, means welcome cost cuts, without really abandoning, and pissing off, clients.

Is this a new start for Eudora, or will it simply fade away into Thunderbird? What say you?