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Goodbye, Lotus 1-2-3

Posted by timothy on from the 3-2-1-zero dept.

walterbyrd writes "In 2012, IBM started retiring the Lotus brand. Now 1-2-3, the core product that brought Lotus its fame, takes its turn on the chopping block. IBM stated, 'Effective on the dates listed below, [June 11, 2013] IBM will withdraw from marketing part numbers from the following product release(s) licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:' IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0. Further, IBM stated, 'Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after September 30, 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs.'"

6 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How about cutting Notes? by JDG1980 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lotus Notes may well be the worst piece of software ever to exist (even if you include blatant malware in the competition). It is technically considered a "groupware" platform, but in practice it's almost exclusively used as an email/calendaring client, and it absolutely sucks at that, lacking the most basic features every other email program takes for granted.

  2. Lotus -- OpenOffice by enterix · · Score: 4, Informative

    Latest versions of Lotus brand suite were based on OpenOffice. Symphony was just the Lotus style shell over it. There was no native version for years. Anyway, it is interesting how IBM can walk away from products with arms... Hard drives, ThinkPads, now Lotus...

  3. OO support by anybody_out_there · · Score: 5, Informative

    Now if (Open|Libre)Office would just do a decent job of not mangling Lotus 1-2-3 worksheets! I have some stuff I've been maintaining for over 20 years in Lotus 1-2-3 (starting back in the DOS days, but eventually moving to '97). I'd love to convert/upgrade it, but there are some things in there that just don't seem to be supported in Excel or *Office.

  4. Re:Will they be open-sourcing it? by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's a good news/bad news situation.

    Good News: Currently IP law *is* abandonware. It sunsets the monopolies.

    Bad News: It sunsets about as fast as a Venusian day

    We obviously need to fix the latter, but fortunately the Founding Fathers new these things should be 'limited'.

    --
    People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
  5. Now that Microsoft has decided to adopt the UI... by DougReed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Gee and just after Microsoft decided to adopt the silly flat tile User Interface paradigm too. You would think its popularity would surge.

    Unintuitive interface... check.
    Nothing works quite right... check.
    Square confusing tiles in a grid... check.

    It should be the Windows 8 standard!

  6. Re:How about cutting Notes? by Dishevel · · Score: 3, Informative

    PINE was awesome for its time.

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?