ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701270086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: URBANA, ILL.
SOURCE: JO THOMAS THE NEW YORK TIMES
WHY IS THE CREATOR of a popular e-mail program neither rich nor famous?
A hedgehog ran under the sofa in Steve and Cindy Dorner's living room, dodging children and visitors, while two large tropical birds gave a running commentary. Out of range of the noise, Dorner, the man who invented Eudora, the e-mail software used by 18 million people, was at work in his backyard office, intense and, as always, alone.
At age 34, Dorner has to his credit not only Eudora, but also PH, an e-mail and telephone directory program used by hundreds of universities and corporations.
On a cold winter morning, Dorner brewed tea in the tiny office that used to be his woodworking shop, and explained how an inventor of software used by millions could end up neither rich nor famous.
He was working at the time, in the 1980s, on the computing staff of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which gave both the Eudora and PH softwares away. He was paid a salary, and nothing more.
``To have other people use and enjoy your program is probably what a certain breed of programmer is really interested in,'' Dorner said. ``That's the ultimate reward.''
When he needed a name for the electronic mail system he was designing, a short story by Eudora Welty came to mind. It was called ``Why I Live At the PO.''
Working on e-mail day and night, he said, ``I felt like I lived at the post office,'' so he named his program Eudora and transposed the story title into the slogan ``Bringing the PO to Where You Live.'' It was the only hint he gave, and the name elicited ``all kinds of strange etymologies.'' Some thought it was a combination of Greek letters, others thought he had named it for himself - the ``dor'' in Eudora representing the ``Dor'' in Dorner.
``If I'd had any inkling that this program was going to be as successful as it has been,'' he said, ``I would not have named it Eudora. Not because I don't think it's a good name, but because I feel presumptuous having named my program after a living person. I feel...'' He hesitated. ``Embarrassed.'' He has never spoken with Welty.
Her agent, Timothy Seldes, said the author had been ``pleased and amused'' by the tribute.
But comments about the name of the program paled in comparison with what Dorner calls his ``snake mail.''
He had used a picture of a rooster with an envelope in its beak to announce new mail on his software program, but he needed something else to show no mail was waiting. He decided on a snake. ``The idea was that the rooster would have brought your mail, but the snake ate it first,'' he said. ``It was a friendly little snake.''
The hate mail flooded in.
``I have had any number of people tell me they are afraid of snakes, and it's horrible for me to put this snake in the program,'' he said. Others were irate at what they saw as a slander on snakes.
In fiction and in life, the University of Illinois has been a creative center for computers and software. It was the birthplace of HAL, the computer in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' and in recent years not only became home to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, but also the birthplace of Mosaic, the browser that transformed the use of the Internet.
Mark Andreesen, the University of Illinois undergraduate who conceived Mosaic at the same time Dorner was working on Eudora, went on to develop the Netscape Navigator and became a multimillionaire at age 24 when Netscape Communications Corp. went public.
There was no such Cinderella story for Dorner. He left the university staff in 1992, only because he wanted to keep working on Eudora.
Qualcomm Inc., a communications company based in San Diego, signed licensing agreements with the university for the development rights to Eudora and later for the trademark, paying a sum a university official described as ``not huge - more than $100,000 and less than $1million.''
Dorner became a principal engineer at Qualcomm, working mostly on Eudora. But he did not get a cent in royalties, because the inventions of Eudora and PH were considered work-for-hire by the university. Nor did he move to California.
So he arranged to commute by telephone, and moved his office into their home. At first he worked in a windowless bomb shelter, built under the house in the 1950s and entered through a trap door.
After two years he moved into the woodworking shop, which has windows and heat.
He gets about 100 e-mail messages a day and said that having 18 million users ``is very gratifying, but it can also make me feel a little hunted sometimes.
``There are days when I think that every one of those 18 million people thinks I'm wrong, stupid and out to get them.''
LENGTH: Medium: 90 linesby CNB