Ed Brill

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1. 1  Jeff Widman http://www.jeffwidman.com/blog/ | 12/24/2008 11:46:12 PM

   Glad people like you and Sacha ({ Link } ) are working for IBM.

   You were a pleasure to interview--especially appreciated your professionalism, knowing the impending controversy.

   Perhaps I'll see you at Lotusphere.

1. 2  Henning Heinz  | 12/25/2008 4:56:20 AM

   Duh?

   "Currently, out of the approximately 10,000 companies using the Notes/Domino platform, only 30% are US based."

1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/25/2008 8:18:43 AM

   @1 Jeff thanks!

   @2 I will provide feedback to Jeff ... should have caught that on first review.

1. 4  Neil Wainwright http://www.nexonia.com | 12/25/2008 9:14:10 AM

   It was an interesting read. You're the right guy for the Lotus brand Ed. :-) My comments:

   1. Keep innovating on the UI. It's not done yet.

   2. Get the word out about what's possible with Notes and don't be afraid to talk about companies using @Functions to deliver significant value (business cares about value...IT/IBM cares sometimes too much about the latest cool programming languages).

   3. Make the programming models even easier. @Functions, simple forms and views made Notes rock at the start. They're pretty easy to use. It only gets more complex from there, and doing more advanced apps forces the use of more complex languages. How to make complex apps easier to build?

   You know, the old line is that "Notes makes hard things easy, and easy things hard". So make both easy. All done by March? ;-)

   ...Neil

1. 5  Rish  | 12/25/2008 7:26:56 PM

   What about giving inbuilt style sheet editors in page like MS provides in Visual Studio? For writing style sheets, I always need to use some html editor or copy paste from net...Anybody who have different ideas ?

1. 6  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/25/2008 10:54:45 PM

   @5 - Designer in Eclipse, as provided by Notes 8.5, delivers this. You can plug any Eclipse-plugin CSS editor you care for into your Designer environment. By default, stylesheet resources open with the basic Eclipse CSS editor. But if you install Aptana, you can switch that default behavior to something more appropriate.

1. 7  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 12/26/2008 2:44:45 PM

   Ed, I scanned the binaries for GPL code in Lotus Foundations, formerly Nitix. You are currently using GPL code in various parts of the initrd and other ramdisk images on the wvweaver CDROM you are distributing.

   I am hereby and in an electronic mail corresponding to you as an IBM representative, demanding the source codes to the said modified public domain software you used under the GPL license.

   You can email the download link to techscreamer@gmail.com. If you need a physical mailing address email me and one will be provided to you.

   You are expected to do this in a reasonable amount of time or action will be taken against IBM Corp under the terms of the GNU public license and this communication and it's email counterpart will be cited as failure to comply.

1. 8  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/26/2008 2:57:00 PM

   @7 Chris, this site is not connected to IBM and a comment here is, per policy, owned by the poster. If you would like to direct your inquiry to IBM, I am sure you can find the right direction at { Link }

1. 9  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 12/26/2008 3:43:26 PM

   Ed, you are an IBM employee posting about IBM products here. Since you are trying to avoid my inquiring, I have taken the liberty to query the IBM directory to get your "official" IBM email address

   { Link }

   Expect an exact copy of the demand for the Lotus Foundations source code from above at that email in 3 minutes or so.

   Normally I would also mail you a printed copy next day via USPS, so I can get the old "i got it" signature; Though you have acknowledged the request already by replying to my comment.

   I think it's safe to say you read and understood it by now. The formality of sending it to your IBM email address will be complete momentarily. Enjoy your coffee and start tarring it up.

1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/26/2008 3:58:43 PM

   @9 I'll be happy to redirect your inquiry to IBM legal if I receive it.

1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/26/2008 4:07:34 PM

   @9 Chris, you'll forgive me, I can't really pass on a request from someone who doesn't even give a full name or other contact information. Thanks.

1. 12  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 12/26/2008 4:08:10 PM

   @10 thank you. Looking forward to browsing the Lotus Foundation sources and recompiling them.

1. 13  Giuseppe Grasso http://www.dominopoint.it | 12/26/2008 7:26:09 PM

   it's on digg front page now: { Link }

1. 14  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/26/2008 9:25:52 PM

   and what an enlightened bunch the DIGG commenters are.

1. 15  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 12/26/2008 11:09:43 PM

   @14 - Do they seem like unusual comments to you? To me, they looked exactly like the comments we see on every Notes post that happens outside of the Domino blogosphere. If the goal is for Notes to be taken seriously in every organization, at some point IBM has to get people like this to at least recognize some good points to the software. For years, everybody thought Exchange was horrible but Outlook was pretty darn good, but (even though it was accurate) few people thought Domino was rock solid but the Notes client was ugly as sin. They all thought "Notes sux" instead. I know we've beaten this horse to death (only about a million times, too), but there's a conventional wisdom associated with Notes, and it's far from positive. Lately (the past 3 years? subjectively?), the trend has swung in a positive direction. With 8.5 hitting soon, I hope that continues. But even though repeating conventional wisdom and relying on anecdotal evidence is rhetorically weak, there is a real issue represented by those Digg comments. And I know you are well aware of this, so I'll stop now.

   More importantly, Happy Hanukkah, Ed.

1. 16  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/27/2008 12:06:32 AM

   @11 - But... Ed... surely... you're not denying... to give access to the source... of Foundations... to some random guy... on the internet.

   unprecidented.

1. 17  Chris  | 12/27/2008 6:03:23 AM

   Ed, Digg users ARE (a key part of) your target audience!

   The DIGG readership is tech savvy graduates or newly recruited (or even 30+) IT literate individuals and will or already have a direct impact on what is being used inside the corporate world.

   Anyway, Good luck.

1. 18  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/27/2008 9:00:33 AM

   @15/17 OK, so my @14 was a bit hasty, but....anonymous Digg readers on a Friday night, it's like a recipe for a flame war. I ack some of their comments like the poor HTML rendering in the client (addressed fairly well in Notes 8), the F5 lock key (again, Notes 8), and the like. Others like the mail rule complainer appear to have locked down environments. Then there's 30 or so comments that are just people piling on about how Notes sucks... which there's some in every DIGG crowd (Outlook sucks, Google is evil, etc.).

   I *am* reading, though through a bit of a filter. That's not denial, that's ack'ing that the readers of Digg are just one group of users that use Lotus Notes. Like this blog, you don't see many comments from Japan, India, Brazil, or even France. We are working hard on changing perception through better product (as Rob ack's in @15), but we have more to do.

1. 19  Ken Yee  | 12/27/2008 10:24:43 AM

   I think the Digg users should just use Notes webmail. It's the "only email" experience they really want. They apparently don't care about making their business run more efficiently w/ custom Notes apps ;-)

1. 20  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/27/2008 11:03:26 PM

   @19 - Ken, if you're not already a Notes shop, how would you ever know that it makes your "business run more efficiently?"

   How would you even know that was the question at hand when thinking about a collaborative platform?

1. 21  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 12/29/2008 11:51:21 PM

   Ed, I got a read receipt on one of the emails I sent containing the request for the source code which IBM borrowed from GNU edited, but did not make available.

   I sincerely hope you did not forget to forward that to the proper person at the company as I will be filing a claim against IBM in the coming weeks in the absence of the source code packages they are required to make public.

   This wasn't a digg thing for me that I was going to forget about. I have been at odds with Nitix for quite some time now because of the BDC, and their crown corporation funding sources. That code belongs to me as well as all people that paid income tax in Canada, not IBM exclusively. That is above and beyond it being GPL'ed code that was not re-distributed correctly.

1. 22  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 12/29/2008 11:53:57 PM

   I simply want to give the code back to myself and the people who paid for it to be written. I paid taxes on 250k in 2006 in Canada, way enough to write an entire operating system worth of code, and BDC never fulfilled it's obligations. I renounced my citizenship to that country, but I feel an obligation to get the people their code back. BDC is wrong, and I must rectify the situation with my skills.

1. 23  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 12/30/2008 1:03:09 AM

   If anybody is reading through. I know Nitix is not all based on statically linked GPL code. But a lot is, and that's the code I want released according to the GPL license.

   That should be clear. The rest of the functionality can and probably will be re-released with alternate open source code, which is my intention. I had seen the source code of the Nitix packages when open.nit.ca had them as downloadable sources, and I just want the Debian packages and the updated Nitix packages.

   So just give us what you owe us IBM.

1. 24  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 12/30/2008 2:33:48 AM

   LMAO.

1. 25  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/30/2008 7:46:11 AM

   Chris, I don't discuss in public what transpires within IBM. I will tell you this much -- you'd have a lot more credibility if you actually provided your real full name than if you were some ranting guy on the Internet.

1. 26  Kerr  | 12/30/2008 8:59:41 AM

   @Chris, while I'd be extremely disappointed to find IBM was not fully complying with it's obligations under the GPL and as entertaining as it is to watch you flail around here, you really are firing off at the wrong target. Maybe a friendly email to Bob Sutor, VP Open Source and Standards (sutor@us.ibm.com) might be the place to start instead spouting demands and non sequiturs about Nitix's previous funding.

1. 27  Chris http://techscreamer.com | 1/2/2009 10:34:46 AM

   @Kerr,

   I got this email from Ed.

   "Chris,

   IBM has received your request and is reviewing it.

   --Ed"

   But IBM has still not provided me with a link to the download.

   @Ed, you went through and read my blog post and conversation with Mark MacCloud from Tungle on the Techcrunch post. All you had to do is a whois on the blog.

   Just as all I had to do was visit the IBM directory to get contact info.

   If you would like me to provide that information, simply email me and request it. I shouldn't have to provide a lot of information in order to get source code IBM should have made public, but I will provide it on an on demand basis. I did leave my telephone number in my email requesting the source code, and NO ONE from IBM has called to request further information.

   Let's get away from the peripheral discussion here, and get to the issue. Where in god's name is the modified GPL code Nitix is using, both the bintools, kernel, and the packages not in the Debian base distribution?

   I mean why is it this hard?

   I can't believe this is happening?

   "non sequiturs about Nitix's previous funding."

   I don't think that issue is insignificant at all.

1. 28  Chris http://soeet.com | 1/16/2009 10:44:36 PM

   I'm still waiting?

   I'm getting ready to file a formal complaint against IBM to release the source code.