Steve Dorner is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

who developed the Eudora

e-mail client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web app, web application which provides message management, composition, and receptio ...

in 1988 as a part of his work as a staff member at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

. Dorner was hired by

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

in July 1992 and Eudora was subsequently acquired by Qualcomm. Dorner also developed a popular online directory/phone book in the early 1990s commonly referred to as the

CCSO Nameserver A CCSO name-server or Ph protocol was an early form of database search on the Internet. In its most common form, it was used to look up information such as telephone numbers and email addresses. Today, this service has been largely replaced by LDAP ...

. Dorner received his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

in computer science in 1983 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A 1997 interview with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' describes how Dorner, when he stopped working for the University and started working for Qualcomm, chose not to move to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Instead, he was a

remote work Remote work (also called telecommuting, telework, work from or at home, WFH as an initialism, hybrid work, and other terms) is the practice of work (human activity), working at or from one's home or Third place, another space rather than from ...

er from an office in a 1950s bomb shelter under his home in

Urbana, Illinois Urbana ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. As of the 2020 census, Urbana had a population of 38,336. It is a principal city of the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, which had 236,000 residents i ...

. Later, he moved his office to his woodworking shop, which is heated. As of 2006, Dorner was one of Qualcomm engineers tasked with shifting Eudora to a

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client that also functions as a personal information manager with a Digital calendar, calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix (protocol), Matrix), ...

base.

Cancer diagnosis

In November 2010, Dorner was diagnosed with cancer, which manifested itself first as testicular cancer. As of January 2011, his personal blog reported that treatment was continuing. In July 2011, Dorner reported that his cancer might have been eradicated.Dorner, Steve
“Info: PET CT Round III”

References

External links

Project Penelope
Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni American software engineers {{US-compu-bio-stub