Considering the relatively positive comments here and its prominence, it is fairly interesting that there are no notable FOSS alternatives for Notes, not at least any that I'd know of. I suppose writing corporate software is not that sexy, but on the other hand I'd imagine document management is something that would be a itch to be scratched even in personal use (it certainly is for me)
Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
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Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was going to link to IBM Lotus Symphony[1] in response to your question but it turns out it's only tangentially related to Notes, sharing some marketing names and, eventually, included with Notes (version 8 I think). Symphony was initially proprietary, then freeware and finally, in 2012, turned over to the ASF as a donation. It basically consisted of a typical spreadsheet, word processor, presentation suite all usi…
Symphony was Openoffice shoved into an Eclipse UI.
Hah, yeah, that's a good way to put it. For some reason I had it in my head that Notes got carried along with Symphony but it turns out it was the other way around with Symphony being given away as a free add on to Notes.
I had the "pleasure" of using a Notes/Domino solution back in the mid 90's but it was only for a couple of months; when I joined they were most of the way through a migration to MS Exchange/Office. Can't say I loved/hated it with the same zeal as other posters, just didn't have enough time to form an opinion at the time.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#33The timelessness of the promises made in this specification are very interesting to me. A more idealistic (and younger) version of me would love to help build an open platform that could fulfill a lot of these promises, likely just because it's fun to build platforms. No doubt it such an effort would also be doomed to relative obscurity, not unlike the other various collaboration platforms that come to mind (Microsof…
The timelessness of the promises made in this specification are very interesting to me. To me as well. Reading the PDF, it reminds me of WinFS, which I worked on. (Though I don't remember WinFS's collaboration story.) Dreaming in Code [1] is a great book about Kapor's attempt to build such an open source platform, post-Notes. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the problem space. [1] https://www.amazon.co…
I have no specific questions to ask, but I'm intrigued to hear you worked on WinFS. WinFS is something I wish happened, albeit I'm sure that what I thought it was wasn't what it actually was (since I never actually used it, wrote any code the APIs, etc, I can't ever be sure).
I was enamored with BeFS. When I heard about WinFS I was excited to think it might bring some of the coolness that BeFS provided to a mass audience. It's a shame what happened to both BeFS and WinFS.
Thanks for the link to the book. I had no idea that it existed. For awhile I kept checking-in on Chandler, hoping it was going to actually happen.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#34Notes is a real mixed bag. On the plus side, its open-ended, fully customizable document database is a phenomenally powerful tool for creating information management systems that map very closely to the unique workflows and structures that arise in any business. As an expression of the promise of office automation, it's pretty compelling. On the other hand, it's the world's worst email & calendar client and much of i…
My theory is that Notes email was there for the sake of being the all-things-to-all-people discovery mechanism for the documents (apps) people author. Like search engines are for the web.
Receiving documents-nee-apps in your email does make sense for one-off apps (Google Forms-like stuff: one could author a poll on where to get lunch, and then send it to their coworkers, who could then respond without ever having installed said polling app before.)
But I think they mis-considered the "hierarchy" of users: for every 1 person who can write such a poll in Notes from scratch, there's 100 who'd be willing to use a pre-programmed poll template document, but who would never even consider authoring such a thing themselves.
Instead of Notes having an email client "home page", they could have had an "app store": a directory of all the templates published to your Domino server, which you might configure and then send out. Like the opening screen of a word processor or spreadsheet program.
And, with the discovery mechanism out of the way, Notes wouldn't need to "absorb email" at all. They could have gotten away with just sending the resulting .nsf files over SMTP, reading them back over POP3/IMAP, and then distributing a Notes Outlook plugin that would render MIME-multipart messages that contain an application/x-com.lotus.nsf part using Notes.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#35A well run Notes system was a real pleasure to deal with. I worked for a 300-ish employee company spread over 4 countries and 2 US states around 2001-2004 and we used Notes for all internal document management, email and later even web content management. The thing just quietly kept everything in sync; distributed servers, mobile users and their laptops and traditional desktops, and never lost a byte of it despite fl…
I used to work for a company that built Notes apps in the mid 90s, and while the UI was clunky as hell, it was a great tool.
I was a big fan of the Domino back end too, in spite of the ridicule it got. When Couch and Mongo came out, it was kinda refreshing to me to see "document" oriented dbs come back.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#36A well run Notes system was a real pleasure to deal with. I worked for a 300-ish employee company spread over 4 countries and 2 US states around 2001-2004 and we used Notes for all internal document management, email and later even web content management. The thing just quietly kept everything in sync; distributed servers, mobile users and their laptops and traditional desktops, and never lost a byte of it despite fl…
Can I contact you via email? Would love to ask you some questions about Notes.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#37Ah, Notes. NoSQL before it was cool to be NoSQL.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#38I appreciated the nosql-like database model of a "notes" and "views". It inspired the way I managed data for the remainder of my career. I believe the concept of "tags" of flickr or "labels" of gmail are Notes-inspired concepts. Maybe it doesn't scale well for late 90's internet-enabled desktops, but Ray Ozzie developed software with a solid 15-year shelf life. I'm happy to have had the few years experience as a lotu…
I worked on a team that built a SAAS/Intranet product in Domino in 1998[1]. We built called "involv" which was basically like Basecamp. All of it was done in Notes using the webviews, etc. Back then, we had to deal with a total lack of web standards, etc. We hosted the SAAS version of the product at a telco in the US.
It's crazy for me to think back to those times. I remember when someone came around the office saying "Hey check out this new cool thing called Futuresplash" and that product would end up becoming known as Macromedia Flash.
[1] https://books.google.ca/books?id=jlIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA...
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#39I would be interested to see the original spec for Lotus Agenda. That product still has a legion of fans extolling its virtues online. And it was a DOS product.
Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
#40Considering the relatively positive comments here and its prominence, it is fairly interesting that there are no notable FOSS alternatives for Notes, not at least any that I'd know of. I suppose writing corporate software is not that sexy, but on the other hand I'd imagine document management is something that would be a itch to be scratched even in personal use (it certainly is for me)
CouchDB is the FOSS alternative to the Notes (Domino) back-end database. Other alternatives exist for the user directory, PKI, web application server, messaging, etc. No single FOSS alternative contains everything, but you can stitch together a substitute out of various pieces.