OpenNTF.org activity is accelerating

September 2 2009

Over the last couple of weeks, OpenNTF.org seems to be, as promised, moving past the necessary bureaucracy of getting a formal foundation set up and back to the business at hand -- code, code, and more code.  If the intervening organizational work turned you away from OpenNTF, may I strongly suggest you turn back.

Steve Castledine and Niklas Heidloff have a number of updates on the OpenNTF blog:

and a host of additional new projects, activities, membership drive, and plans for 8.5.1.  See details here from Steve Castledine.

I am really happy to see the activity level and projects turning the corner back to what OpenNTF is really all about -- code and extending the value of the Notes/Domino platform!

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8.5  Add/View Comments [10]

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  1. 1  Bruce Elgort http://elguji.com/products | 9/2/2009 11:51:38 AM

    Ed who could have imagined that the idea that Nathan proposed back in 2001 to start an open source community for Notes and Domino would be the vibrant community we have today. It's great to see the work being done by the Alliance and especially the developers, comitters and others. Nathan's vision was spot on.

    Many thanks to IBM for re-igniting OpenNTF.

  1. 2  Mike Mortin  | 9/2/2009 3:09:34 PM

    Doh! Here I thought you were prompting my new one :-)

    { Link }

    I am in touch with the other Master Chefs to see if we can work together...

    Bruce, you are so right about Nathan's vision.

  1. 3  Eduard  | 9/2/2009 5:10:56 PM

    strangeness, absurdity, contradiction, paradox, abnormality

    These are the terms for an open source community project based on proprietary software such as openntf based on Lotus Notes/Domino. Once I was a Lotus Consultant CLP certified (on v4,5,6,7). No more. I don't like this kind of ambiguity and manipulation IBM and other companies are making on such a thing as open source. It's the same as dirty ecology used only to sell more, but not for human benefit.

    The only way some people like me will come back to Lotus Notes/Domino will be when open sourced, so many times asked for.

  1. 4  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/2/2009 9:50:46 PM

    @3 no human benefit? sure there is. Why else would thousands participate in OpenNTF? As for open-sourcing Notes/Domino....to what end?

  1. 5  Alex  | 9/3/2009 2:21:18 AM

    Lets get real. I've downloaded and seen at least 2 hundreds projects in OpenNTF some time ago.

    Maybe 3 or 5 of them are worth using. Most of others are unusable, with no documentation, with lot of bugs, etc.

    So, all these projects on OpenNTF are NOT "open-source". They are just playground for some developers who have extra time.

    In my opinion, if OpenNTF community want to make site better they should review all projects, delete almost all of them except 10-15, and then improve whats left to the level when all people can install it and use it.

    As for open-source LND. Well, I think that making Notes client open-source will be very, very good idea. But I'm sure IBM will never do that.

  1. 6  Henning Heinz  | 9/3/2009 5:17:07 AM

    @3Eduard Unfortunately I/we don't know you so it is hard guess what we will get when you come back to Lotus Notes/Domino.

    @5 What would you do with an Open Source Notes client? I think you have a point with your playground comment but you can download any project and make it better, then publish your new version and make people happy. Sounds much like Open Source to me. If you speak about deleting projects then you should consider taking a look at the 2 new categories Apache and GPL (well GPL is empty for now) at { Link } and then say what to delete there. This is the new OpenNTF concept but you seem to talk about the old one.

  1. 7  Steve Castledine http://www.stevecastledine.com | 9/3/2009 7:43:18 AM

    Alex - we are currently looking through the projects to up the quality and see if we can remove any. Before I read your comment I already had emailed a few owners today as some projects are basically just advertisements for their product with no code at all.

    We will only delete projects that never got started - we do not want to "kick off" any projects for any other reason really.

    So Henning is right this is why we have the new catalogs that go through a process from "project development" to milestone/tested versions in the catalogs. The catalogs will then provide that higher standard of projects to download/browse through. This catalog software, as well as the project management software, is undergoing a design review right now.

  1. 8  Andrew Broxholme http://www.waveplus.co.uk | 9/4/2009 6:15:09 AM

    I have been a member of OpenNTF for years and dip in every now and again but although the principle is good the implementation is poor. The project quality is low, applications are usually full of bugs or have insufficient documentation to be considered for implementation. The biggest issue I have is that having posted projects you never get feedback from those that download them, or even know who has downloaded them. I think that the author should be told who has got a copy with contact details so they can follow up the download if they choose to do so.

    What I would most like to see is a proper catalog of production ready applications including some that are not free. You need to have a mechanism that allows buyers to leave feedback on quality. It wouldn't stop a developer from posting a free projects (cost $0) or even demo apps for evaluation. In the end nothing is free and everyone knows that, OpenSource has to have a payback at some point or why bother?

    I think what we really want is for more people to use Notes/ Domino which means providing a rich collection of functional & useful applications that help people run their lives or their businesses. I applaude IBM's recent change of heart and the regeneration of the 'Lotus' brand, so as developers we need to get behind this and get organised.

  1. 9  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 9/6/2009 6:52:08 AM

    @5 how many projects have you helped with?

  1. 10  David Jeyachandran  | 9/6/2009 6:58:03 PM

    How do we get more contributions to openNTF. IBM must have hundreds of well designed Domino applications. Can we see more of them?

    How can we encourage organizations to contribute applications and show them the benefits of contributing? My organization has given approval to post the "Data Moving Animal". We have had excellent suggestions/feedback that have made the applications much better for our company and the Notes community benefit too.

    The quality of the code on openNTF is going to improve when serious development/consulting shops like IBM and other business partners post good applications.