Ed Brill

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1. 1  Alan Bell http://www.astoryforbedtime.com | 7/11/2006 8:18:25 AM

   it is always easier to get a laugh by being critical. I really don't know why so many people keep on about historical versions, Linux 1.0 wasn't that great either. Raw X windows (without Gnome or KDE) sucks quite badly too, and there are apps written to many many different toolkits on Linux, causing inconsistency and general wierdness. Check out the Blender UI for example, and contrast that to Gnome applications. It certainly isn't using the conventions and toolkits that it mostly pre-dates.

   I think the media buzz this created should help internal business cases for stuff like designer on Linux shouldn't it?

   There were some comments in the slashdot thread from people claiming to be ibmers or ex ibmers (of course they could be anyone really) and these were not that positive. I think more could be done to educate the traditional relational database folk about Notes and the object store.

   Apart from the occasional daft decision (F5->ctrl+alt+del) the user interface is pretty good and going in the right direction. The back end is great, and has been for decades, why not get more techie PR about it?

1. 2  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 7/11/2006 9:42:27 AM

   Ummm... hmm... zealotry and computers? Let's see, MAC vs PC, Windows vs Linux, Notes vs Exchange, Java vs C++, tables vs CSS formatting? No zealotry here! :p

   Keep in mind that most slashdotters are more h@X0r types and wouldn't necessarily have much experience or need for Lotus Notes. Some may have an association to some awful job that they had to hold down.

   I wouldn't put too much weight to it. Having read a bunch of the slashdotter's roll, I'd have to say that by and large it was mostly positive and understanding of the value. As a control experiment, try reading a slashdot comment roll on ANY other topic and you'll see a consistant thread of negativity running through. Even if it's about the advance of world peace and the end to hunger. It's a point of pride for that community and expected behavior.

   Having said that, IBM still needs to be more proactive about evangelizing uses for Notes beyond mail and calendaring. There has been a lot of inward-facing discussions and videos of Notes-Domino value, but I want to see some adpages and reviews in the tech rags talking about hard value, and not just something vague like middleware.

   Where The Register, or some other source demonstrates a lack of awareness of recent progress, someone should be in their offices in the next week showing them what's changed and letting them know that IBM is listening, and even more, fighting for their customers.

   Those outdated attitudes that keep resurfacing are a reflection of many years neglecting the potential user base. Just releasing a string of press releases over a year doesn't educate people about actual value. It'll have to get in front of their eyes a dozen or so times before you can generate hype in the non-indoctrinated.

1. 3  Edward Doan http://www.ibm.com/chips/power/ | 7/11/2006 9:47:20 AM

   I can understand some of the negative sentiment; being an IBMer doesn't mean you have to like everything IBM makes. Having used Microsoft Outlook in previous jobs, there are things Outlook does well, but having been at Lotus for 2.5 years, I still think Notes is superior as a collaboration platform.

   Notes users generally fall into 3 categories: 1) hate Notes but have to use it, 2) agnostic/apathetic, 3)zealots. Category 3 is obviously the most vocal; the parallels between Notes loyalists and Team OS/2 of yesteryear are obvious. I think it's great that the Notes fans are out there defending the product, but I am glad to see that we haven't degraded into blind Mac/Linux fanboys.

   Having used the Notes on Linux client internally for the past several months, I am glad Linux users are who they are -- technically savvy and generally patient. This will help with acceptance of Notes on Linux, especially because it is largely a version 1.0 effort with its share of quirks.

   By the way, Ed, congrats on getting Slashdotted and not having your server go down! I think that's a true testament to how robust Domino is!

1. 4  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/11/2006 11:14:25 AM

   Not only did the site not go down, but Ed's site didn't screw with Alan's, Adam's, Chris', or mine ... who said Domino's web server was weak :)

1. 5  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 7/11/2006 11:48:22 AM

   John, vowe.net runs with 20,000 other sites on the same 3U box. ;-) Who said, LAMP was weak?

1. 6  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/11/2006 12:11:38 PM

   LAMP rocks ... PSC uses it for projects. Just like Domino, LAMP has its place in the market.

   My comment was in response to all the bashing about how Domino can't handle large traffic ... not to compare it to anything else. This was more a pat on the back to our networking team that does a great job while always having their to the fire.

1. 7  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 7/11/2006 1:07:30 PM

   8000 hits is not large traffic unless we are talking 8000 hits in half an hour. And yes, LAMP has a place in the market. Quite a big one actually.

   Put 20,000 sites on a Domino server. ;-)

   And yes, all hail to your networking team.

1. 8  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/11/2006 1:49:53 PM

   OK, OK, children, can we get back on topic?

1. 9  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 7/11/2006 2:21:54 PM

   We are. It's not about how a Domino server can survive 8000 hits with the help of a great admin team.

   You wanted to know how the Domino community sounds. There you have it. :-)

1. 10  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 7/11/2006 2:42:29 PM

   Regarding zealotry, superiority and defensiveness in the Notes/Domino, I'm frankly shocked you'd even ask the question. When was your last blog post that was even marginally critical of IBM, Lotus, or any of their products?

1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/11/2006 3:03:41 PM

   @10, last week, maybe?

   { Link }

1. 12  Jack Dausman http://www.leadershipbynumbers.com | 7/11/2006 3:29:03 PM

   It used to be that merely mentioning Lotus Notes would wrinkle the nose of any tech savant. It's just not the case anymore--I thought the Slashdot forum was actually a decent mix of the usual chaotic discussion. I mean, really, how am I supposed to respond to someone who prefers Pine as their e-mail client. That's like someone preferring VI to OpenOffice/SmartSuite/MSOffice.

   I don't know if the Lotus community has parallels to Mac, Linux or even Star Trek devotees. I do know that Lotus professionals have survived by being passionate about their platform. And, that's ok with me.

1. 13  Andrew Price http://www.healthspace.ca | 7/11/2006 10:59:44 PM

   >>Great, now Linux users can suffer the horrible fate that is Notes<<

   LOL. Beautiful summary of a lot of the attitude on /.

   Zealotry: I AM a Notes zealot. I came to my zealotry because Notes does some things effortlessly that other systems cannot do at all. That has not changed in the last 12 years.

   To be sure, there are things that Notes does poorly (we use RDBMSs for reporting for example). But there are things nothing else does even halfway well.

   Andy's law: If your product does not have zealots, then it sucks.

   (btw: several years ago our Domino server served 6.5 million hits in 48 hours, app. hits too, not just static pages, it got slow, but it did not crash.)

1. 14  Axel  | 7/12/2006 2:44:28 AM

   Does anybody have to love Lotus Notes?

   Better to take it light.

   I perceived some negative feelings from Notes aficionados towards J2EE or .NET. Maybe my perception is wrong or it is all based on rational arguments.

   Now a part of the linux@slashdot crowd show some negative feelings towards Lotus Notes. No big deal.

1. 15  Axel  | 7/12/2006 3:35:10 AM

   ... and in reality perceived by its far less about LAMP, Notes, J2EE, .NET, RoR, Web2.0 or whatever magic acronyms we choose to sputter, but more about how the workers run their projects (knowledge, testing, communication).

1. 16  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 7/12/2006 10:06:00 AM

   @11 - Referring to a post on a colleague's blog where the responses are critical doesn't mean you are also being critical, especially since you didn't even state your own opinion on the matter.

   I don't mean to sound like I'm attacking you ad hominem and I do feel very strongly that Lotus needs people such as you to defend against the misguided, uninformed and inappropriate attacks from detractors. My problem with that is we never get the less biased view that is willing to say "I can't believe we did this."

   Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect that, but Scoble did so in his blog. It's already established that you are not Scoble and the intent of your blog is not the same, and I'm not expecting you to turn into the internal Lotus critic. I just wish there was a source for that kind of open dialog. With that absent all I ever hear from the Notes community is zealotry, superiority and defensiveness.

1. 17  MarvinK  | 7/12/2006 12:11:21 PM

   I usually don't detect a lot of zealotry from the Notes community as a whole. Most sites ran by people who aren't IBM employees recognize that its a very, very capable collaboration platform with an improving user interface (which still can stand some healthy improvements).

   Like Charles Robinson said @16, we obviously don't get that from IBM-centric blogs... we'd expect exactly what we get: Microsoft trashing and claims of superior usability (and any claims to the contrary must be referring to ancient versions and those people probably haven't heard about our future releases). That zealotry probably comes with the territory.

1. 18  Sean Burgess http://www.phigsaidwhat.com/ | 7/12/2006 12:38:42 PM

   @12 I saw that comment about Pine also and almost fell out of my chair laughing. Having used Pine in college, I am not really sure that it even qualifies as an email system.

   The problem I have with most anti-Notes zealots is that they have never been a developer or administrator for Notes/Domino and, therefore, don't have a real perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the platform. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop them from having an opinion about how much it sucks. Unless you spend some time actually working with a system, it's tough to give an educated opinion on it. It is for this reason that I don't talk about how muck Windows, UNIX, or Exchange systems suck other than responding to actual examples and comparing them to how Domino does them.

   @16 As far as being critical of IBM/Lotus, I think the the Domino community does an exceptionally good job of pointing out when they really screw things up. Garnet ring a bell anyone? Sure we tout all the good things that can be done with Notes, but we also gripe about the horrible state that is the IBM product catalog or the ineptitude that can be Lotus Support. If you ever have any doubt, just read Nathan's blog and watch him rant at some of the UI decisions in Hannover. It's really not our fault that the platform we work on has been a useful part of the business environment for over 15 years. Maybe we'd be more at fault if we were a NeXT or BeOS zealot.

   Sean---

1. 19  Axel  | 7/13/2006 2:53:57 AM

   I don't expect anybody to be like me, but for me its sometimes usefull to insult my fields of expertice like for example Domino as the most pointless things ever created on our beautiful planet. It really gives energy to digg a deep hole in some other stuff like for example eclipse plugin-development, spring/hibernate or SOA.

   For many years I hope for a relaxter relations of the inhabitants of IT departments towards their favourite platforms. Unfortunatedly it just won't happen in my lifetime. I have to live with it (big sigh).

   Its sometimes really annoying. I was more than one time in some customers IT infrastructure and some strange bug shows up. If you mention it for the general good of the projects progress, more often than not some little defender of technology x crosses your way telling anybody that you have no idea about what you are doing. And in the end you have to proof this shame of the human race that its not you but the infrastructure.

1. 20  Marshall Wilensky  | 7/13/2006 8:50:30 AM

   For those of you in the Boston area, the next Boston Linux and Unix [BLU] User Group Meeting is a demonstration of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 -- the "other" platform for the Notes/Linux client.

   When: June 21, 2006 7:00PM (6:30 for Q&A)

   Moderator: Skip Paul, Novell Systems Engineer

   Location: MIT Building E51 Room 315

   Skip will demo and talk about SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Novell's new desktop OS which is scheduled for release July and is geared towards the "general knowledge worker", i.e. one who uses applications like email, web browser, and an office suite. SLED 10 also includes XGL and Compiz for a rich graphical environment.

   For additional information, directions and parking, please go to the BLU main web site ({ Link })

1. 21  Marshall Wilensky  | 7/13/2006 12:45:16 PM

   For those of you in the Boston area, the next Boston Linux and Unix [BLU] User Group Meeting is a demonstration of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 -- the "other" platform for the Notes/Linux client.

   When: July 19, 2006 7:00PM (6:30 for Q&A)

   Moderator: Skip Paul, Novell Systems Engineer

   Location: MIT Building E51 Room 315

   Skip will demo and talk about SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Novell's new desktop OS which is scheduled for release July and is geared towards the "general knowledge worker", i.e. one who uses applications like email, web browser, and an office suite. SLED 10 also includes XGL and Compiz for a rich graphical environment.

   For additional information, directions and parking, please go to the BLU main web site ({ Link })

1. 22  Henning Heinz  | 7/13/2006 1:20:11 PM

   Yes, from my opinion the Notes community sound like that too but is that a bad thing?

   But I also think that "Well, I don't like Lotus Notes, but it's great news for Linux!" is not a bad comment.