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Campaign to Open Source IBM's Notes/Domino

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the if-you-can't-sell-it-use-it-for-free-advertising dept.

Ian Tree, an IT consultant from the Netherlands, has started a campaign to convince IBM to open source the code for Notes/Domino. Hoping for results similar to the push for Sun to open source Solaris, which finally saw success in 2005, Tree makes the simple point that it won't happen until someone asks. "By being an open source product, Tree is also hoping that Domino becomes something schools use to teach groupware and application development concepts, which is the holy grail for future market adoption. This is how various Unixes, relational databases, Linux, and a raft of other products eventually became commercialized. While the idea of open sourcing any proprietary program is appealing, in as much as it sets a program free to live beyond the commitment (or lack thereof) of its originator, it is hard to see why open Notes/Domino would have any more impact than OpenSolaris."

24 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. uh, no? by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Funny

    Speaking on behalf of the poor bastards that have played with Notes: Please don't put him on our team. Really, Notes is like the last kid to get picked when we're making teams. He drops the ball lots and he cries even when we play tag only. We only let him play at all because the teacher makes us.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:uh, no? by dk90406 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Don't worry. IBM will not allow Notes to come out and play freely with other kids. Others have worked on open sourcing OS/2 for years, but all have failed.

      The patents linked to the products, makes it a no-go. Besides, IBM still makes a lot of money from Notes/Domino.

  2. Open source and Lotus Notes? by fucket · · Score: 5, Funny

    The perfect storm of horrible interface design. If only we could get the geniuses behind Band-in-a-Box on board.

    1. Re:Open source and Lotus Notes? by MobyDisk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's a fair reason in general, but the only reason I know of to interoperate with Notes is to export the data to something else.

    2. Re:Open source and Lotus Notes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Gimp is open source and it's UI sucks too.

    3. Re:Open source and Lotus Notes? by Keyper7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Precisely because Gimp is open source that someone was able to tweak its GUI and make GimpShop. That's qbzzt's point.

    4. Re:Open source and Lotus Notes? by Koda · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Disclaimer: During a different stage of my IT career, I was a certified Lotus Domino Application Developer -and- System Administrator.

      The Lotus Notes UI WAS overdue for a significant overhaul. For years, it wasn't horrible interface design, but LACK of design that led to the meandering mess that most people experienced in the last two decades.

      As of August 2007, IBM finally released a truly well-designed Lotus Notes mail client: Lotus Notes version 8.0, which is, IMHO, the most comprehensive remaking of the Lotus Notes client and its e-mail interface since Notes began. Every client release up until now had UI changes that were evolutionary at best.

      The new client itself now sits on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Framework, and will consequently run on Windows and Linux (Mac support coming shortly with 8.5). And you can still access all the same Lotus Notes corporate applications that range considerably in quality. And in fact, the Notes 8.x client can still access Domino 7.x mail files, and they will look exactly the same as they did before (although client menus have changed).

      But if you run Domino 8.x servers, with the 8.x mail template, and are using Notes 8.x, the e-mail UI is a ground-up redesign that is far superior to anything that came before it. If you've ever whined about Lotus Notes mail in the past, you should check it out - that complaint is now outdated.

      My 2 bits...

  3. CouchDB by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    CouchDB, which has been generating some hype lately (especially among Rails fans), is by Damien Katz, who did work on LotusNotes and Domino, and claims CouchDB is inspired by that.

    According to him, Lotus got a lot of things wrong, but it got the database right.

    I don't know if there would be anything to gain from the original (even just to read through it), or if we should all be focused on CouchDB now, but it would be interesting to find out.

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    1. Re:CouchDB by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And your own appeal to authority would work better if you had a little more respect for the most popular LISP dialect in the world. Seriously.

      But consider two things: First, the storage is JSON (not JavaScript), and I don't actually know that it's the on-disk format (I doubt it), only that it's the format exposed to developers. What would you use in place of it, for a schema-free database? XML? ASN.1? Serialized objects in $my_favorite_language?

      And for what it's worth, JSON is not just Javascript -- it's also valid notation (as in, you can pipe it through eval, if you really want to) for Python, Ruby 1.9, and probably others I don't know about.

      The only better candidate I can think of is YAML, which is more complex to parse, and a superset of JSON anyway.

      Second, the views (sort of a query language) aren't necessarily Javascript. It's true, Javascript is the default view format, but it can actually be any language that can operate on text sent via a Unix pipe. I hear Python developers are using it with some success.

      But given the choice, would you rather write SQL than JavaScript? Really?

      Of course, it also has the nice side effect that you can write an entire application in JavaScript, using AJAX, talking directly to the CouchDB server. But I'm guessing that's a side effect, not the real reason Javascript was chosen.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  4. *ring*ring* by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hi, can I talk to the product manager of Outlook? Thanks, I'll hold.

    Hello? Hi, I think it would be spiffy if you would consider open-sourcing Outlook. No, the whole shebang, not just the client. Yeah, server side components and everything.

    I think it would prolong the life of the product since it would allow it to exist beyond your commitment to it. And you know, as the saying goes, more eyes lead to shallower bugs.

    So what I'm proposing is that you open up the source and give it away for free. Then you could...

    Hello? Hello?

    1. Re:*ring*ring* by truthsearch · · Score: 4, Funny

      You certainly do live up to your username. ;)

      --
      Developers: We can use your help.
  5. Slow news day? by DXLster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dumb idea. Whether you love Notes or hate it, open sourcing it would just be dumb when there's already 800 engineers working on it inside IBM. The number of developers that would contribute to it would drop dramatically.

    If you want to develop open source applications ON TOP of Notes/Domino -- you can just look to http://www.openntf.org/

    1. Re:Slow news day? by DXLster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Notes/Domino product line generates somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year for IBM in pure software sales (not services.) It's also recorded 15 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, and has grown by over 50% since 2004.

      You can see more at the long-running blog of Ed Brill, former worldwide head of sales for Notes/Domino, and currently Director of End-User Messaging and Collaboration. He just finished a year-in-review post http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/2008-the-blogging-year-in-review

  6. Re:As an Outlook/Exchange fanboy.. by quanticle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I fail to see how making Notes open-source would help this aim. After all, the main obstacle to people using calendaring and groupware apps is that said apps are difficult to use. Given Notes' horrible record regarding usability, I fail to see how making Notes freely available to all would spread the usage of calendaring amongst the general computing public.

    In fact, I think that GMail and Google Calendar are doing more to spread automated calendaring than open-sourcing Notes (or even Outlook, for that matter) ever could.

    --
    We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
  7. What was it before there was Firefox? by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ah yes, Netscape. I was never a fan of Netscape. I thought MSIE was better and faster for the longest while. Netscape was, at one time, very closed. But once things got going, Firefox came out of it. Perhaps the same might happen with this? People WANT an open source groupware server and the ones that exist now seem to lack in one way or another. But perhaps a project that starts with working code, just as Firefox started out, could turn into something a lot better... something that could kick Exchange and MS Office to the curb.

  8. Have you thought about this? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Funny

    You not only want to expose the source code of Bloated Goats to the world but intentionally expose young people to it? Good Lord, man, have you no mercy in soul at all?

  9. Re:As an Outlook/Exchange fanboy.. by __aasqbs9791 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The last I used something like that I thought you had the option of refusing it? I couldn't refuse them because it was my boss that sent the "request" and I actually liked being included on the meetings as it was better than hearing about the decisions made later on. Not that it really mattered, but every once in a while the upper management would listen (usually by accident).

  10. Re:As an Outlook/Exchange fanboy.. by afidel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's see, you can either have everyone keep up their calendar, or you can waste 3-5 minutes * n people in an average meeting * number of meetings in a year. There's a reason companies will pay the bucks they do for groupware licenses. Add in the workflow stuff they enable (though much of that is moving to web based apps) and they just make sense for many organizations.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  11. database vs mail by faraday_cage · · Score: 5, Informative

    As a former Notes Sys Administrator, it had its benefits, and its problems. The fact of the matter was that the email and scheduling part of it were never its strengths. The databases, and the applications that it built were by far superior groupware than anything I have seen. Oh to be able to replicate something like Access databases at the click of a button for users who do need to work on data offline. As an earlier commenter said, they got the database right. Everyone just assumed they 'tacked on' the email and calendar as an afterthought to facilitate workflow solutions. Notes Replication was simply the best (when it was configured properly). But having previously installed Notes clients and managed it, I can tell you that setup of the client was a breeze compared to setting up and configuring Exchange/Outlook. From an end user perspective, there were some things they got very right, and still as many they got wrong. But comparing it to Outlook (apart from the few scheduler limitations), it was far cleaner and quicker in so many ways.

  12. Re:Yawn by Belial6 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "who only seen the Web as a medium a few ages ago"

    Only if you consider 1996 to be a few years ago. Domino's biggest problem is that it has been too far ahead of it's competitors, so it is common for people not to understand the benefits that it offers, and by the time the rest of the industry catches up, the features have been rebuild a little different, and the people who now start to understand it complain because the feature that Domino had a decade earlier doesn't look just like the program that was developed this year.

  13. Re:The database is the problem with Notes... by Koda · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Notes "database" was one of the strengths and weaknesses of Lotus Notes.

    Background - speaking strictly about the native Notes Storage Facility (.nsf) format (and not to newer options for RDMS virtualization or or DB2 backend for custom development):
    - Everything in Lotus Notes is stored in a "note", each of which has an XML-like data structure. Keep in mind that there was no such thing as XML, or even the internet, when Lotus Notes was first developed.
    - User data notes are usually called "documents".
    - The components of the design of Lotus Notes application are also stored as XML-like data notes, and are usually called "design elements". So even forms, views, images, script libraries, etc, are stored in "notes".
    - The data notes are not dependent on the underlying design elements for their existence. This is a really weird concept for SQL DBAs, where the data is bound to tables for its structure. Drop a table in the SQL world, and you lose your data. In the Notes world, if you delete a field from a form (a design element), the form itself, or even delete views (also design elements)... and the data is unaffected.
    - All of the data and design "notes" for a Lotus Notes "database" are stored together a self-contained NSF file.

    The loosely structured nature of a native Lotus Notes database means it is both VERY flexible, but lacks some of the rigor (and related benefits) associated with a true RDBMS. Oh, and you can't use SQL to do cool things like left and right outer joins. Instead, you use a Lotus formula language, LotusScript (very similar to Visual Basic), or Java to "lookup" data for display or for repeated storage within a note.

    Even Notes data types are much more flexible/loosey-goosey than found in the RDBMS world. They can be boiled down to:
    - Text (stored as the equivalent of varchar(32768) in the SQL world)
    - Numbers (no need to define integers, floats, or doubles)
    - Date/Time
    - Rich Text (including attachments, formatting, tables, etc)
    - "Name" type fields, which are related to Lotus Notes security.

    The loose structure also lowers the barriers of entry to slap together a Notes database. A person can know enough to be productive/dangerous without having a clue about referential integrity, primary keys, or tables.

  14. Oh God NO! Not Lotus Notes again! by zildgulf · · Score: 3, Informative

    And, of course, Notes ran best on the OS/2 server platform. :)

    I should know. I WAS a Lotus Notes admin/developer/E-mail admin until '03. Boy, did I pick the wrong horse! The malfunctioning Domino Web server, which would render only some of the Native Notes elements requiring me to create parallel HTML/XML code for every single database form, the bloated Web Mail Java Applets that refuse to download/upload, and a total mess of the Email/database system.

    I still cringe when hearing references to programing in Lotus Notes. The native language to Lotus Notes is the Lotus Formula language, where no looping allowed and certain functions could not be put before others for no good reason (or unpredictable side effects will occur).

    Then the dreaded DbLookup function. That one function alone caused so many intradatabase dependencies that I could not remove out-of-date documents in fear of causing problems in other seemly unrelated documents in bloated Databases.

    Please, somebody kill Lotus Notes with FIRE!

  15. Open Source This... by System_390 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some of us would like to see IBM "open source" other stuff, like OS, VSE, VM. Heck, they can keep the source, just give us a hobby, or a "not for profit" license...

    And they can keep the current stuff, the stuff they make money on today - like z and ESA. I'ld be more than happy if I could run something like the 20+ year old VSE/SP on my PC at home, under Hercules...

    But no, we're stuck with 40 year old "public domain" software, stuff like DOS 26.2 from the System/360 days. Hey, it was fun, I was the "Sysgen Kid" back then. But it only remotely relates to what an, even 20 year old mainframe, is all about today, stuff like CICS...

    CICS is a perfect example. Back in the 1.x days, you had 100% of the CICS source code, as long as you had a license. Today "transactiuon server" is a big secret...

    Sorry for the OT rant, but it ticks me off. IBM has dumped billions into Linux, but us old greybeards, those of us that wrote those countless lines of Assembly and COBOL and RPG, and yes, CICS code, custom code, without which IBM would have a great OS and nothing else. Those of us that worked shift after shift of unpaid OT, tweaking that demo, making it perfect for the guy that will be spending the IT budget. Those of us that helped make IBM what it is. Those of us that truly enjoy what we do, as a job and hobby...

    We can't play with our toys at home, legally that is...

    I'm going to retire in a few years. I won't be a licensed user any longer. And I surely can't afford the 4 figure monthly "commercial" software license fee, let alone the 6 figures to "buy" it...

    Come on IBM, great "open source" promoter that you have become lately. Do it for us original geeks, we need something to do in our old age...

    Open source this - VSE/SP 3.1

  16. Re:Oh God NO! Not Lotus Notes again! by DXLster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the bloated Web Mail Java Applets that refuse to download/upload, and a total mess of the Email/database system.

    The Domino Web Access client was one of the very first commercial AJAX implementations and didn't use any Java whatsoever. It came out in 2001 with release 5.0.8, and could be implemented by applying a new template to your mail -- a process that could be performed by a competent administrator in about 15 seconds across an entire server.

    I still cringe when hearing references to programing in Lotus Notes. The native language to Lotus Notes is the Lotus Formula language, where no looping allowed and certain functions could not be put before others for no good reason (or unpredictable side effects will occur).

    False. The native language to Lotus Notes is C, and there is a comprehensive C API that has been made available since version 1. The original end-user programming language was @formulas, and was styled after the 1-2-3 formula language back in 1989. In 2002, IBM released Notes/Domino version 6, which included a comprehensive rewrite of the @formula engine to dramatically improve performance and flexibility. It also added looping constructs.

    However, it's not like you couldn't do loops before. Notes 4 came out in 1994, and included Lotusscript -- a VB-like scripting language, which provided a sophisticated class model and extensive OOP capabilities. Lotusscript remains the dominant language in Notes/Domino development worldwide (though many devs on the platform are moving to Java & Javascript with the latest versions.)

    Then the dreaded DbLookup function. That one function alone caused so many intradatabase dependencies that I could not remove out-of-date documents in fear of causing problems in other seemly unrelated documents in bloated Databases.

    Wow. Sounds like you kept top-notch entity relationship diagrams.

    If you were running a MySQL database on the backend, would you know every single application in your environment that queried every table? Would that be MySQL's fault?

    Please, somebody kill Lotus Notes with FIRE!

    Yeah, let's kill a platform because zildgulf doesn't know how to write and document a computer program. So it must be bad!