Ed Brill

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1. 1  Andy Brittain http://www.time-technology.co.uk | 9/10/2007 7:07:39 AM

   Excellent! just the news we needed Ed.

1. 2  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 9/10/2007 7:18:37 AM

   This is very important news for the long term future of the productivity editors, great stuff!

1. 3  Bruce Elgort http://www.BruceElgort.com | 9/10/2007 7:45:14 AM

   Go offense!

1. 4  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 9/10/2007 7:46:23 AM

   Good to hear!

1. 5  Pedro Quaresma  | 9/10/2007 8:18:44 AM

   Excellent news indeed!

1. 6  Phil West  | 9/10/2007 8:40:08 AM

   wow!

1. 7  Roger Fitch  | 9/10/2007 8:44:23 AM

   At last !! excellent news

1. 8  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 9/10/2007 8:44:31 AM

   Most definitely a big step in the right direction.

1. 9  Pete McPhedran  | 9/10/2007 9:45:00 AM

   About time,

   I have been complaining for a long time about a software company that has an office suite but universally uses their competitors suite instead. What does that tell your clients?

   As a BP we used SmartSuite exclusively until this year when we switched to OOo. Now, let's see how many IBMer's take the plunge and how fast.

   --Pete

1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/10/2007 9:48:24 AM

   @9 it will certainly help that IBM has no plans to roll out Office 2007 internally. Notes 8 is the plan.

1. 11  Ken Barker  | 9/10/2007 10:12:44 AM

   Great...now when R8 for the MAC comes out (complete with productivity tools (right Ed?), IBM will have the only "total office solution". I won't need my WINXP install for anything but R8 Designer.

1. 12  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/10/2007 10:37:09 AM

   @11 yes, the productivity tools will be in the Notes 8.x on Macintosh.

1. 13  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/10/2007 10:38:28 AM

   Hey, look at that. I guess you shout loud and long enough and common sense prevails. I look forward to the first code delivery. Ed, will you be in the know as to when the first bits of married code hit the download mirrors?

1. 14  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/10/2007 10:39:35 AM

   @13 I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The code in Notes 8 is already derived from OpenOffice. I think it's reasonable to deduce that there will be more in the future, but no specifics to announce yet.

1. 15  Ken Barker  | 9/10/2007 10:41:16 AM

   @12...I love you man...

1. 16  Mika Heinonen http://www.siipi.com/mika | 9/10/2007 11:11:45 AM

   IBM made the right decision. I've been also working with the the real OpenOffice, and I must say it's much better than Microsoft Office. It's a joy to work with it because "Calc" (the "Excel" app) does exactly what you want, and not like in Excel which does exactly what you DON'T want.

1. 17  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/10/2007 11:42:36 AM

   @14 - As I mentioned in a previous thread here, the Productivity Tools are based on the OpenOffice 1.x codebase which is no longer being pushed by anyone but IBM. In that thread, I also encouraged that IBM drop it's internal codebase, and use the 2.x-3.x codebase as it moves forward and just participate in the developmental process of the OpenOffice app as it's API is already complete with an Extension mechanism and is touched by thousands of worldwide developers. IBM could save a lot of woe by focusing on internal bindings via LotusScript, @Formula, or IBM's JVM than to push forward an entire codebase.

   Now the press release doesn't state that IBM will go this route, but I can't imagine that such a relationship would do anything but naturally move in the direction that I state above just because of issues cost conservation. It's not like IBM can't make sure that OpenOffice includes features that are good for IBM. :)

1. 18  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/10/2007 12:10:00 PM

   I should correct my above post, the first sentence reads as though I was the only one to mention the 1.x codebase which was not my intent. Sloppy. Damn sloppy. :P

1. 19  Axel  | 9/10/2007 12:28:57 PM

   best luck

1. 20  Chris Aniszczyk http://mea-bloga.blogspot.com | 9/10/2007 4:28:26 PM

   I believe the reason IBM is still on the 1.x code base is due to the license. The old license was SISSL which was a very liberal open source license from Sun ;)

   As of 2.x, OpenOffice.org switched to LGPL which I believe is an issue.

   However, IANAL :)

1. 21  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/10/2007 5:04:37 PM

   LGPL is considered high-risk by IBM legal. I don't know if that's why the Lotus Editors are a forked 1.x, but I know that GPL stuff is a big barrier to them.

1. 22  Erik Brooks  | 9/10/2007 8:27:15 PM

   About time! I was wondering when this seemingly obvious step was going to happen. I just hope that IBM's not too late to the party since much of the community has moved on to 2.x+.

   Oh, and @9: Eat that dog food! It's always great to hear IBM do that. And I'm sure you guys won't mind relieving yourselves of a few MS Office licenses as a side effect. ;)

   @21 - That's sad to hear. Now that OO is GPL, I wonder if there is any "way out" from IBM's standpoint...

1. 23  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/10/2007 8:53:46 PM

   @22 - Sad, maybe, but certainly understandable. Consider the legal battle that IBM is currently in with SCO. Consider the implications of a stated requirement where...

   "if you distribute copies of the library, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. If you link other code with the library, you must provide complete object files to the recipients, so that they can relink them with the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights."

   So the requirement is that anything under any GPL, even the lesser GPL, is that any DERIVATIVE WORK is also free-of-charge: "You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

   If IBM deploys the productivity editors with version 2.0, which is LGPL, then they can't charge for Notes 8 as a software package. They could pursue a Red Hat option of "charging for the supported version." But they MUST offer a free-of-charge version of that GPLed code -- if I read the license correctly, at least.

   Now, one can argue, as I certainly have, that it would benefit IBM greatly to offer the Notes client free-of-charge. However, that's certainly a point of contention, and for IBM to put themselves in a position where they could NEVER AGAIN charge for the client is...

   well...

   huge.

   And more than I would think fair, as an advocate, business partner and customer.

1. 24  Mika Heinonen http://www.siipi.com/mika | 9/10/2007 11:20:32 PM

   @23 They could still charge for the Notes C++ client, which ships with the Java Client anyway, since the Java Client crashes at startup if nlnotes.exe doesn't exist. So we could have full source code of the Java Client, while the C++ Client would be still IBM's property.

1. 25  Julian Woodward http://blog.woowar.com | 9/11/2007 1:36:51 AM

   @23 - Is it not stretching a point under LGPL to classify the Lotus Notes client as a 'derivative work' from OpenOffice?

   If NetworkWorld is right (see my blog for link), part of the announcement was that the Notes editors WILL be rejoined with the current OpenOffice codestream in a point release of Notes. Either NWW is wrong, or IBM's legal badgers* have found a way to ringfence core Notes so they won't be backed into a give-it-away corner.

   *Badgers are smarter than eagles IMHO

1. 26  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/11/2007 5:52:37 AM

   @25 - The fact that it's "stretching a point" rather than simply being clear is exactly the concern. Can you imagine if IBM had to spend SCO-suit money on defending it's ownership of Notes?

   IBM can give stuff back to OOo all it wants without impacting it's own rights. It's only in accepting stuff from someone else that their ownership becomes murky.

   I should point out that the Apache & Eclipse licenses are both OK with IBM legal, which is one of the reasons both of those licenses are now available for OpenNTF.org projects. :-)

1. 27  Erik Brooks  | 9/11/2007 6:53:44 AM

   @26 - I feared that something with the licensing was bothering IBM legal (since it seemed to have taken forever for them to join OOo - though maybe that was delayed simply for marketing timing with ND8). I hoped that I would be wrong, but...

   That's good news with the OpenNTF licensing options.

   @25 - There are people out there drooling to sue a gargantuan company such as IBM. All an attorney needs is an opening or a "stretchable" point. I would think that IBM is well-advised to stay away.

   So is IBM locked into the 1.x codestream, or can they offer certain cut-and-dry alternatives to allow Notes to be cleanly distributed with the newer versions? For example, if OO 2.x incorporates some LotusScript hooks later on (which IBM can cleanly provide to the OO community), can Notes ship *without* OO and the install will "see" a previously-installed OO setup and things automagically work?

1. 28  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 9/11/2007 7:32:25 AM

   @27 - That's exactly what I was thinking. Make the IBM PE's stand alone and offer those for free, and include extension points for hooking into Notes. That would circumvent the "whole of the work" clause in LGPL.

1. 29  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/11/2007 7:40:18 AM

   @27 - Interesting question. :-)

1. 30  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 9/11/2007 8:22:54 AM

   @27 - It is not a question of whether they are locked into 1.x, it is a question of whether they stay up to date on ODF on their own or as part of a community effort. Given IBM's experience with trying to maintain its own browser, I hardly think they want to go it alone, but I'd certainly be careful of giving anybody a "stretchable" point if my pockets were as deep as IBM's.

1. 31  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/11/2007 9:43:07 AM

   Well the legal constraints are well and good, but a large number of my not very complicated templates built in the OpenOffice.org 2.x codebase DON'T layout properly in the PTs. So the whole point of the project is made moot in my mind.

   If it is truly a legal issue, then why not just bundle an API, java Swing objects, database templates, and @Formula & LotusScript Libraries and call THAT the PTs. And just have the installer download whatever OOo release is appropriate for the PTs current level of OOo support. That's how open-source projects like Ubuntu handle the use of closed-source drivers and apps. Why can't IBM do the reverse?

   That way the product USES OOo, but doesn't actually contaminate IBM's legal department with bad dreams of law suits. You could even have the PTs look exactly the same since you'd just be loading GUI objects with Swing.

   The problem is that, while in theory, the PT's bring a lot of coolness to the table, in actuality they bring a lot of new headaches to any IT department that's ALREADY USING OpenOffice and ODF, or for companies who want to use ODF in places where (given the way the PTs are bundled) there won't be any client installed i.e. Home Office/DWA users/Thin Clients/etc. To do that, you need OpenOffice, or have to buy a PT license, which most people aren't going to do, and haven't done.

   Sure, in the FUTURE, the PTs will be able to integrate into Notes better, and provide all kinds of collaborative applications for document creation and workflow, but we can do that with OOo RIGHT NOW!!! It's UNO system is almost pure Java and Python. The View has already published a ton of articles on how to load OOo objects into the Notes client, why not just turn the PT's into Doc Library templates with the above suggestions underneath it? Reel the future in a little early?

   And by the way, I was looking forward to a future where I could use Quickr in a Linux only environment. But that one is now a ways off too.

   Ed, help me out here. All due love and respect here, but sell me on this concept because if the IBM's contributions with Sun aren't a two way street, and the PTs aren't brought up to the 2.x codebase (or at least unless the rendering issues are TOTALLY nailed down) then I don't see any value-add in the Productivity Tools.

1. 32  John Head http://www.psclistens.com | 9/11/2007 10:59:09 AM

   @31 Samuel - just as the rest of the Notes 8.0.0 client was focused on the end user, so is the PT right now. I gave a presentation here at Collaboration University on them and asked about what people wanted more right now ... end user features and admin control or development hooks. Guess which one won? Overwhelmingly it was end user and admin control. That is what we got in 8.0.0. Things will change.

   As someone who lives and breathes Office and OOO integration in the marketplace, I would never sell a customer on the PT if they were doing OOO right now. But there is this huge base of Office users that do zero integration that they cover today.

   Developers will get some minor attention in 8.0.1 and more in NMFR.

   I too hope that we get OOO 2.x code in the future .. but that is a giant hurdle. Things like Writer Mail Merge uses the Base application for the Address Data Source funtionality. Since there is no Base PT ... they have to think smart about it. I would rather they take their time and get it right instead of rushing and we get nasty soup. It is not like they are going to update the PT trunk with OOO 2.x code for a MR.

1. 33  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/11/2007 11:27:36 AM

   @32 - Well John, that's very informative as usual. Even so. I still can't figure out why the Lotus Team didn't just make a OpenOffice Doc Library a LOOONG time ago. That's DEFINITELY an end-user benefit. Also, using Swing (and I ask as a non-expert, though I'm slowly learning) can't you just load up the GUI pieces you want/need and use local scripting/objects for the rest?

   i.e., can't you create a LotusScript/Java object that pulls together a mail-merge off of names.nsf or a pernames.ntf -based application and display it in the OOo document viewport? The OOo interface is VERY flexible and configurable. Again, I am but a grasshopper in this particular area of code, but I have a decent understanding of how the API's are supposed to talk to each other. At least I think I do. :P Please correct me if I'm off the mark.

1. 34  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/11/2007 12:16:16 PM

   Actually, given that the OOo 2.x GUI is in AWT and SWING, and Eclipse is all in SWT and JFace, I wonder to what extent reasonably performant integration is even possible?

1. 35  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 9/11/2007 2:21:09 PM

   The LGPL is indeed the lesser GPL, it was also for a time known as the library GPL. It allows a "library" to be joined to an "application" to produce a "combined work" where the library is licensed under the LGPL and the application isn't. The full GPL would not allow this, but the LGPL does. That is it's raison d'être. Frankly if you want to contribute to a debate on the point your first stop should be to RTFL { Link } too many people skip that step.

   Up for debate is the strength of the links between the application (Notes core) and the Productivity editors and whether that constitutes a suitable level of separation between application and library. Personally I think it is a no-brainer because the productivity editors are an optional component in the install. Notes basic is clearly not a derivative and dependent work of the editors, the full client is the combined work. Now the really interesting part is that section 4 of the LGPL requires IBM (not now, after they take new code under LGPL) to release enough source to allow others to modify the LGPL part then put it all back together again. I would take that as meaning that you could replace the LGPL OOo derived code with stuff that derives from a newer version of OOo and expect it to work (well it might not be easy but it should not require any undocumented black magic to make it work).

1. 36  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 9/11/2007 2:23:24 PM

   @31 you can turn on the full UNO API for the productivity editors. It is just a few registry settings, see here { Link }

1. 37  Stuart McIntyre http://lotusconnectionsblog.com | 9/11/2007 2:38:53 PM

   @31 Can you clarify what you mean by "And by the way, I was looking forward to a future where I could use Quickr in a Linux only environment. But that one is now a ways off too."?

   Quickr/J2EE is supported on Linux now, and the web interface is supported in Firefox on Linux too.

   It would be great if the Connectors were to be supported right now too, but that doesn't stop you using Quickr today...

1. 38  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/11/2007 3:41:54 PM

   @36 - From your link: "In Windows (I haven’t figured it out in Linux yet) open regedit." There you have it. I'm using Notes 8 on Linux. If there's a way to do it in Linux, that's great. But it still doesn't address document rendering parity between the PTs and OOo which is the biggest issue worth discussing here as it transcends any integration kung-fu that can be conjured up.

   @37 - When all your servers are on Linux and you aren't dropping for WebSphere it does. Pre-launch I was combing the web for info on Quikr, and nowhere that I looked did it say (I'm prepared to be wrong if someone has a pre-launch link) that the server-side Linux support was only going to be for WebSphere. Also, Firefox is not Linux client support, it's browser support that happens to be cross platform.

   These are a BIG differences, and ones that were not made clear in the marketing run-up to Quikr's launch. I bought Quickplace licenses in advance (to save a few bucks no less) based on the information I received at a LCTY event in Chicago, as mentioned here before, and have had several conversations on the matter with the IBM Partners where I bought the licenses from that reinforced those perceptions. So these ideas were in the channel whether or not some people knew better.

   Now, buyer beware and all that, but if you're IBM is going to plaster it's blogs with press releases and commentary shouting "Domino Integration and Linux Support," from the rooftops, then there should be an asterisk somewhere saying what that means! I don't mean to sound grouchy about this, the money spent wasn't huge, but I just keep shaking my head as these seemingly half-baked bolt-on products keep coming out when almost everything they've been releasing can be done IN NOTES using the existing toolkit (the sametime gateway requiring WebSphere with no Domino analog is a perfect example). ...especially when the marketing promises have huge caveats that aren't known publicly until launch.

   The core product is amazing and I love to learn new things I can do with it! I just wish IBM would use it own Notes/Domino toolset for new Notes/Domino products instead of bolting new external processes and products into the Domino Server and then wondering why everyone pitches a fit when it doesn't behave properly, if at all, on all the same platforms as Notes and Domino do.

1. 39  Bob Congdon http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 9/11/2007 5:56:34 PM

   @34: Eclipse 3.2 and later support Swing-based plug-ins but there are quirks. It's fine for a quick port but it's not really the "Eclilpse way" to go. Workplace Designer (aka Lotus Component Designer) started life as Swing-based code running in a "Eclipse-like" shell. All of the Swing code was replace with SWT. Probably difficult for IBM to do the same to OOo 2.x since Sun isn't exactly an SWT cheerleader.

1. 40  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/11/2007 6:37:18 PM

   @39 - Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't "legacy" notes handle SWT/Swing Java elements? I could have sworn there's a pre-8 article that the Lotus Advisor published on using swing to build Notes interfaces. I don't think Eclipse need be an issue here since all old code should still work.

   Again, there are tons of articles, some from John Head on using LotusScript and Java to load elements of OOo into the Notes viewport. It may not be easy, and I say this naively as I don't have the LotusScript OR Java chops (or time) yet to really test this out, but my understanding is that this is not unreasonably difficult to do.

1. 41  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/11/2007 10:36:09 PM

   you guys have been killing me with the speculation today! :) ZDNet joined in, too... "IBM to lift lid on its OpenOffice plans next week"

   { Link }

1. 42  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/12/2007 5:50:19 AM

   @40 - You can include SWING libraries in Java agents/applets in Notes, and they will render in client space, but I would describe this approach as.... raw.

   Here's a simple demo { Link }

1. 43  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 9/12/2007 8:46:23 AM

   @41 - You guys are killing us with the broadly scoped press releases with no details, so there! :P

   In all seriousness, I didn't catch that there was more info coming and will patiently till next week.

1. 44  Chris Aniszczyk http://mea-bloga.blogspot.com | 9/12/2007 10:23:30 AM

   @39

   I like hearing "the Eclipse way" in the Notes community ;)

   FYI, there's a pretty good article detailing the Swing/SWT integration quirks on Eclipse.org

   { Link }

   While it's possible to integrate Swing within Eclipse, it's generally not recommended due to these quirks. However, we live in the real world and have a lot of applications out there that aren't Eclipse-based so we have to live with these quirks.

   Good luck.

1. 45  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/12/2007 9:55:14 PM

   For those still following along, a few more morsels of information are available in this interview with Doug Heintzman, Lotus Director of Strategy:

   { Link }