Posted by
CowboyNeal
on from the bring-on-the-apps dept.
Code-Fu writes "NetWare is nowhere. That's the word from Lotus Development."
You can read the rest of the story here.
This involves Lotus bringing Domino to Linux, and will probably mean Linux being used in more business settings. I like it.
35 comments
Re:When I think of Lotus, I think of...
by
DamienLassiter
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· Score: 1
Actually, I tend to think of Executive Briefing System, Mitch's first product on the Apple ][. It was a glorified slide show program, but there was nothing else like it at the time (~1980 - '81).
Err...Am I dating myself??
Old news, but ever so quiet now...???
by
Denny
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· Score: 1
Since I read this story the first time, I have started working somewhere that expressed an interest in considering running Notes / Domino on Linux, and being a vocal advocate I got delegated to go and find some progress information on this...
Guess what... there is none. Nothing, zip, nada... Lotus don't even have a page about it on their website, just a couple of vague mentions on unrelated pages...
Makes me wonder if it was all a big PR stunt and will get quietly swept under the carpet later...?
I seem to remember having read this nearly a month or two ago on slashdot. Are we doing a "Best of Slashdot" series now? hmmm. Maybe my mind is just defective--giving me fake memories. But hey, its friday morning (9am) and I've already had several arguments with the local NT machines, so what do you expect?
Seems like a smart move on the part of Lotus
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Domino is a perfect place to embed Linux. It can then be distributed as a single-CD setup thing. Plug the CD into the drive, boot the CD, it installs a tuned version of Linux and Domino on top of it. The fact that Linux can be so customized will make it possible for Lotus to finely tune the OS to do exactly what they want it to and nothing more.
I don't see this as a "win" for generic Linux users, though. Once the Domino server is going, there won't be much at all about the machine that signals that it's a Linux box. There won't be a generic "Domino Server" available for the xxx (i.e. RedHat, Debian, SuSE...) distrbution of Linux. The Linux core will be completely wrapped up in Lotus' proprietary layers.
Re:Seems like a smart move on the part of Lotus
by
ivan256
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· Score: 1
Domino will run on standard distributions, not embedded as you say. (Let's just say I know!:)
slashdot moderators over worked
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/02/1436210.shtm l
Re:slashdot moderators over worked
by
SamIIs
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· Score: 1
Wow.
Good call, AC. What's up, guys? A little repetitive. A little repetitive.
Linux reduces the cost to users, and should be an easy port since they're already supporting Unices. Netware, on the other hand has completely different DNA than anything else on the planet and probably represents considerable porting and maintenance challenges.
In terms of how this effects Novell users, it effects them not at all. Notes, I believe can access Novell NDS through LDAP. Hardware is cheap enough so that if you don't have to buy the O/S, having to buy some commodity hardware to run small Notes installations isn't going to be a show stopper. On the other hand, large Notes installations don't belong on a file server.
-- Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Re:Netware is nowhere...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You have been reading to much MSDN... Lotus is quite a player in the enterprise market. Agreed for their office suite they are useless but their Domino and Notes products are quite profitable and deployed everyday.
I am looking forward to seeing some enterprise capability on Linux.
Re:Netware not app server
by
IntlHarvester
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· Score: 2
The reason anyone cares at all is that many Lotus cc:Mail shops run on NetWare. Since Lotus is (finally!) killing cc:Mail in favor of Domino, this puts NetWare shops in the position of possibly installing Windows NT, something they do not want to do. Hopefully they'll give the Linux option a run.
(cc:Mail sucks eggs, but until very recently had 30-40% of the corporate e-mail market.)
BTW, not only is this old news as far as the press is concerned (annouced in 1998), it's ancient news in the Lotus world. Domino for NetWare has been a undead product for years. Furthermore, Domino has been running on Solaris x86 for a long time, so Linux support is somewhat obvious. --
NetWare is really nothing special. NDS is what really rocks. And the deal with Novell lately is that they're porting NDS to everything else (NT, Solaris, Linux, & others). So really, aside from server-side java apps, NetWare is out of the application market. Yes, Oracle & some other cool apps run on NetWare, but they won't last. NetWare is a file/print server. Period. Anything else is a stretch. I bet the guys at Novell weren't all that surprised. They had their chance to make it great, but they worked on NDS instead (which was a very good move in my opinion).
It's too bad that Netware gets such a bad rap for it's lack of app server capabilities. NDS *rocks* for managing a large, multisite network for providing stuff like file and print, which, other than providing IP access for web browsing, is what 99.9% of corporate desktops use. I wouldn't dream of doing it with NT domains (ick) or NIS/YP (ick).
Besides, most Novell sites use Groupwise anyway, and probably wouldn't be interested in Notes or Domino or whatever it is (and does..)
I lambasted a Novell Sr. Coroporate Business strategist about their lack of Linux support (ie, put Netware file & print on Linux ala Caldera), and he told me that they will be releasing NDS 8 for linux this fall but they see the trend as embedded devices, not multipurpose OSs. In other words, you plug in a storage device, front-panel config basic info and do the rest in the NDS management application.
I think it's a stupid play, personally, but that's their line. I think they're just too proud to give up on Netware as *some* kind of App server.
Re:Netware is nowhere...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Lotus IS a player. Many people are starting to see the limits of Exchange and are now moving back to Notes/Domino. R5 has also proves to be a worthwhile upgrade. The enhanced interface and tight Web integration makes it an excellent contender in the groupware ring.
Hmm, your subject says Netware is nowhere but the message says Lotus. If you meant Lotus then I must disagree, they still provide the leading Groupware product available. They are slowly losing some ground to Exchange but have a long way to go before they're overtaken. I believe that they're also going to be becoming more popular once again after having seen some of the things that R5 can do.
Entire USPS ( US MAIL ) is running on Lotus CC:mail. I don't know what will they choose as a replacement but still, it is huge user base for company like Lotus.
Re:When I think of Lotus, I think of...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
the last company to abandon disk-based copy protection, which did virtually nothing to hinder illegal copying but routinely punished paying customers,
Actually, I think Quark (QuarkXPress) still requires a specific floppy in order to be installed.
Applix is OK, it's just a bit clunky
by
Colin+Smith
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· Score: 1
It's usable, but definitely not elegant.
-- Deleted
When Notes/Domino meets Slashdot ...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The port of Lotus Notes/Domino to Linux is mentioned on Slashdot...
Slashdottir #1: "This is awesome. This is big for Linux. A victory!!!"
Slashdottir #2: "Well, you know, I don't know if this is such a big thing to crow about. It's just more closed-source opportunists jumping on the open-source bandwagon. Lotus ain't your friend."
Slashdottir #3: "I could care less. Notes/Domino is the most vile piece of crap I've ever had to suffer through. It's a horrible system. Their support for Internet RFC is abysmal. And now they want to call it -- Domino Application Server? Give me a break. Look at http://www.lotus.com. It's a horrible site."
Slashdottir #4: "You just don't understand! It's a really sophisticated system. Why it can take years of training just to manage it. This is really important for job security in corporate IT departments. Hey, there are 40 million seats installed -- how can they possibly be wrong? Email and groupware should be complicated."
When I think of Lotus, I think of...
by
ed_the_unready
·
· Score: 3
...the last company to abandon disk-based copy protection, which did virtually nothing to hinder illegal copying but routinely punished paying customers, ...asinine 'look-and-feel' lawsuits against VIP, Paperback and ultimately Borland. The first two were driven from the market, QuattroPro operated under a legal cloud for years while Windows and Excel took the market. Lotus had the gall to complement Microsoft during the trial, for using macro translators instead of direct menu and macro compatibility, ...OS/2 ports that were so horrid and dysfunctional as to beggar the imagination, ...IBM's OS/2 support drying up and disappearing almost to the day that they acquired Lotus. No more Visualizer clients for OS/2 DB/2, the new DB/2 client became Approach...for Windows95. WTF?
Lotus has an extensive history for being far more trouble than they're worth. Leave them to be the bottom feeders in the Microsoft owned market they vigorously helped create. ---------------------
-- ---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
Re:When I think of Lotus, I think of...
by
Rendus
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· Score: 0
Don't forget AutoCAD's wonderful scheme... Need a specific disk from your specific installation, and if it goes bad, you're screwed, even if you have multiple disk sets.
The consulting company I work for just dropped their Notes practice because of lack of work out there. There aren't any new companies looking to deploy Notes or develop on it.
Most companies have adopted intranets instead, and all new development is going that route, primarily because you don't need special Notes clients on the desktop.
Domino was Lotus' attempt to follow the intranet craze. However the previous version of Domino was a huge resource hog. This latest version is supposed to be pretty cool, and will likely find some use, but...
It's too little, too late. Notes is pretty much dead for new installations. The only business it has now is some upgrades.
So I say again... Who cares?
A company two steps away from the grave supports Linux. Whoopdedo. You think there are any big Linux fans who are going to propose Domino over rolling something with Apache?
Highly doubtful.
But we'll see.
Slashdot suggestion
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
CmdrTaco and co need to implement a fuzzy search mechanism which automatically gets run on every story that is submitted to ensure it hasn't already been covered. At the very least, look for duplicate URL's or something!
Hey, Slashdot runs on open source code - why don't you implement this feature yourself? If you code a good enough method of checking for duplicates with no administrator intervention, I'm sure they'll thank you profusely and suck it into the main codebase:)
cc:Mail is a different product entirely. It was a predecessor of Notes.
Although Lotus has done a lot in terms of interoperability of cc:Mail with Notes/Domino.
Yes, there are some large cc:Mail installations out there. But again I doubt this brings in a lot of "new" business.
Compette with GroupWise vs. mail/elm/pine/mutt/etc
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think this is one of the few cases where the lack of a single standardized application for a fairly standard task (email) may make Linux a preferable platform to support. Lotus probably knows that when a business that is largely dedicated to a Novell solution goes to Novell sales for an email system that Novell's top Novell is going to force other mail solutions to compette with GroupWise.
Why is it that every company we see who is suddenly "bullish" about Linux is about two steps away from the grave.
Lotus Notes is near death... Domino is going nowhere.
Who cares?
Re:Lotus is Nowhere...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Perhaps notes is not popular with the linux fokes, but it is VERY popular among large companies. Don't bash things that you know nothing about.
Re:Netware is nowhere...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Are we talking about Smart Suite? I really like that! I is about 1/4 the footprint of Office and I would say that if it were ported to Linux it would be a dead heat between it and Applix for the best suite. Of course, no one ever seems to like Applix either.
It's comments like that that make me wonder what the average age and work experience of/. posters really is.
This story is dated 1st June! I also wrote a piece about this at the time which showed up NT more than NetWare - it seems that NetWare is re-gaining market share, and stopping the NT tide, whereas Linux is mopping up the rest.
Considering that a previous posting dealt with Slashdot as the new form of journalism: come on guys! News has to be new! Sort out your editorial policy! --
Barry de la Rosa, Senior Reporter, PC Week (UK) Work: barry_delarosa[at]vnu.co.uk, tel. +44 (0)171 316 9364
--
--
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My/. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Slashdot Mirror
It was a glorified slide show program, but there was nothing else like it at the time (~1980 - '81).
Err...Am I dating myself??
Since I read this story the first time, I have started working somewhere that expressed an interest in considering running Notes / Domino on Linux, and being a vocal advocate I got delegated to go and find some progress information on this...
Guess what... there is none. Nothing, zip, nada... Lotus don't even have a page about it on their website, just a couple of vague mentions on unrelated pages...
Makes me wonder if it was all a big PR stunt and will get quietly swept under the carpet later...?
Regards,
Denny
Police State UK - news and
Is it just me, or do most of us here read lots of tech news sites - and probably caught that story a monht ago?
george
I seem to remember having read this nearly a month or two ago on slashdot. Are we doing a "Best of Slashdot" series now? hmmm. Maybe my mind is just defective--giving me fake memories. But hey, its friday morning (9am) and I've already had several arguments with the local NT machines, so what do you expect?
Domino is a perfect place to embed Linux. It can then be distributed as a single-CD setup thing. Plug the CD into the drive, boot the CD, it installs a tuned version of Linux and Domino on top of it. The fact that Linux can be so customized will make it possible for Lotus to finely tune the OS to do exactly what they want it to and nothing more.
I don't see this as a "win" for generic Linux users, though. Once the Domino server is going, there won't be much at all about the machine that signals that it's a Linux box. There won't be a generic "Domino Server" available for the xxx (i.e. RedHat, Debian, SuSE...) distrbution of Linux. The Linux core will be completely wrapped up in Lotus' proprietary layers.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/02/1436210.shtm l
Nooo, it makes a lot of sense.
Linux reduces the cost to users, and should be an easy port since they're already supporting Unices. Netware, on the other hand has completely different DNA than anything else on the planet and probably represents considerable porting and maintenance challenges.
In terms of how this effects Novell users, it effects them not at all. Notes, I believe can access Novell NDS through LDAP. Hardware is cheap enough so that if you don't have to buy the O/S, having to buy some commodity hardware to run small Notes installations isn't going to be a show stopper. On the other hand, large Notes installations don't belong on a file server.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You have been reading to much MSDN... Lotus is quite a player in the enterprise market. Agreed for their office suite they are useless but their Domino and Notes products are quite profitable and deployed everyday.
I am looking forward to seeing some enterprise capability on Linux.
The reason anyone cares at all is that many Lotus cc:Mail shops run on NetWare. Since Lotus is (finally!) killing cc:Mail in favor of Domino, this puts NetWare shops in the position of possibly installing Windows NT, something they do not want to do. Hopefully they'll give the Linux option a run.
(cc:Mail sucks eggs, but until very recently had 30-40% of the corporate e-mail market.)
BTW, not only is this old news as far as the press is concerned (annouced in 1998), it's ancient news in the Lotus world. Domino for NetWare has been a undead product for years. Furthermore, Domino has been running on Solaris x86 for a long time, so Linux support is somewhat obvious.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Might be pretty buggy.
I thing we've talked about Lotus AND Linux a few times each. (And even a few times together.)
Monty
It's too bad that Netware gets such a bad rap for it's lack of app server capabilities. NDS *rocks* for managing a large, multisite network for providing stuff like file and print, which, other than providing IP access for web browsing, is what 99.9% of corporate desktops use. I wouldn't dream of doing it with NT domains (ick) or NIS/YP (ick).
Besides, most Novell sites use Groupwise anyway, and probably wouldn't be interested in Notes or Domino or whatever it is (and does..)
I lambasted a Novell Sr. Coroporate Business strategist about their lack of Linux support (ie, put Netware file & print on Linux ala Caldera), and he told me that they will be releasing NDS 8 for linux this fall but they see the trend as embedded devices, not multipurpose OSs. In other words, you plug in a storage device, front-panel config basic info and do the rest in the NDS management application.
I think it's a stupid play, personally, but that's their line. I think they're just too proud to give up on Netware as *some* kind of App server.
Lotus IS a player. Many people are starting to see the limits of Exchange and are now moving back to Notes/Domino. R5 has also proves to be a worthwhile upgrade. The enhanced interface and tight Web integration makes it an excellent contender in the groupware ring.
Hmm, your subject says Netware is nowhere but the message says Lotus. If you meant Lotus then I must disagree, they still provide the leading Groupware product available. They are slowly losing some ground to Exchange but have a long way to go before they're overtaken. I believe that they're also going to be becoming more popular once again after having seen some of the things that R5 can do.
Entire USPS ( US MAIL ) is running on Lotus CC:mail. I don't know what will they choose as a replacement but still, it is huge user base for company like Lotus.
the last company to abandon disk-based copy protection, which did virtually nothing to hinder illegal copying but routinely punished paying customers,
Actually, I think Quark (QuarkXPress) still requires a specific floppy in order to be installed.
It's usable, but definitely not elegant.
Deleted
The port of Lotus Notes/Domino to Linux is mentioned on Slashdot ...
Slashdottir #1: "This is awesome. This is big for Linux. A victory!!!"
Slashdottir #2: "Well, you know, I don't know if this is such a big thing to crow about. It's just more closed-source opportunists jumping on the open-source bandwagon. Lotus ain't your friend."
Slashdottir #3: "I could care less. Notes/Domino is the most vile piece of crap I've ever had to suffer through. It's a horrible system. Their support for Internet RFC is abysmal. And now they want to call it -- Domino Application Server? Give me a break. Look at http://www.lotus.com. It's a horrible site."
Slashdottir #4: "You just don't understand! It's a really sophisticated system. Why it can take years of training just to manage it. This is really important for job security in corporate IT departments. Hey, there are 40 million seats installed -- how can they possibly be wrong? Email and groupware should be complicated."
...the last company to abandon disk-based copy protection, which did virtually nothing to hinder illegal copying but routinely punished paying customers,
...asinine 'look-and-feel' lawsuits against VIP, Paperback and ultimately Borland. The first two were driven from the market, QuattroPro operated under a legal cloud for years while Windows and Excel took the market. Lotus had the gall to complement Microsoft during the trial, for using macro translators instead of direct menu and macro compatibility,
...OS/2 ports that were so horrid and dysfunctional as to beggar the imagination,
...IBM's OS/2 support drying up and disappearing almost to the day that they acquired Lotus. No more Visualizer clients for OS/2 DB/2, the new DB/2 client became Approach...for Windows95. WTF?
Lotus has an extensive history for being far more trouble than they're worth. Leave them to be the bottom feeders in the Microsoft owned market they vigorously helped create.
---------------------
---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
I'm Back.
Lotus is everywhere... check again.
40+ Million users... almost double the next most popular groupware product, which is exchange.
Well I do know something about it.
The consulting company I work for just dropped their Notes practice because of lack of work out there. There aren't any new companies looking to deploy Notes or develop on it.
Most companies have adopted intranets instead, and all new development is going that route, primarily because you don't need special Notes clients on the desktop.
Domino was Lotus' attempt to follow the intranet craze. However the previous version of Domino was a huge resource hog. This latest version is supposed to be pretty cool, and will likely find some use, but...
It's too little, too late. Notes is pretty much dead for new installations. The only business it has now is some upgrades.
So I say again... Who cares?
A company two steps away from the grave supports Linux. Whoopdedo. You think there are any big Linux fans who are going to propose Domino over rolling something with Apache?
Highly doubtful.
But we'll see.
CmdrTaco and co need to implement a fuzzy search mechanism which automatically gets run on every story that is submitted to ensure it hasn't already been covered. At the very least, look for duplicate URL's or something!
Or perhaps you should qualify what arena you are talking about: messaging, colaboration, office suites, development platforms, application servers...
In all things moderation.
cc:Mail is a different product entirely. It was a predecessor of Notes.
Although Lotus has done a lot in terms of interoperability of cc:Mail with Notes/Domino.
Yes, there are some large cc:Mail installations out there. But again I doubt this brings in a lot of "new" business.
I think this is one of the few cases where the lack of a single standardized application for a fairly standard task (email) may make Linux a preferable platform to support. Lotus probably knows that when a business that is largely dedicated to a Novell solution goes to Novell sales for an email system that Novell's top Novell is going to force other mail solutions to compette with GroupWise.
Linus - Lotus - Linux
OK, I'm already confused...
Why is it that every company we see who is suddenly "bullish" about Linux is about two steps away from the grave.
Lotus Notes is near death... Domino is going nowhere.
Who cares?
Are we talking about Smart Suite? I really like that! I is about 1/4 the footprint of Office and I would say that if it were ported to Linux it would be a dead heat between it and Applix for the best suite. Of course, no one ever seems to like Applix either.
/. posters really is.
It's comments like that that make me wonder what the average age and work experience of
This story is dated 1st June! I also wrote a piece about this at the time which showed up NT more than NetWare - it seems that NetWare is re-gaining market share, and stopping the NT tide, whereas Linux is mopping up the rest.
Considering that a previous posting dealt with Slashdot as the new form of journalism: come on guys! News has to be new! Sort out your editorial policy!
--
Barry de la Rosa,
Senior Reporter, PC Week (UK)
Work: barry_delarosa[at]vnu.co.uk,
tel. +44 (0)171 316 9364
-- /. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My