Eudora has long offered a terrific set of e-mail features, including POP3 and IMAP support, incoming mail filters, HTML messages, stationery, spell checking, Gmail-like labels, and a spam filter, in both paid and ad-supported versions. Now its developer is cutting the program loose: Qualcomm will release Eudora as an open-source program sometime later in 2007.

You’ll start to see the benefits of this transition before the open-source version appears, however. Advertising will gradually disappear from the sponsored (ad-supported) starting in February, 2007. So, you can use the full version without being pestered by ads.

For $20, you can be one of the last paying Eudora customers, see no ads at all, get the SpamWatch and BossWatch and Ultra-Fast Search features, and receive three tech-support calls in the bargain. But you have to have version 7.1 if you want to use sponsored mode after March 31, 2007.

Earlier versions will automatically revert to Light Mode that omits some features after that date.

–Scott Spanbauer