"Notes" to be Eclipsed by "Netscape"

At 6:52 PM 9/25/95, Jon Lasser wrote:

>Perhaps the Notes pricing scheme is sooo outrageous (by the standards of
>a student like myself, and probably most others, if it's still anything
>like it was at the 1.0 release) that mostpeople have had zero opportunity
>to examine the program, let alone really have time to play with it?

I've never even _seen_ a copy of Notes running on any machine, nor do I
know directly of _any_ of my colleagues who has. (Not saying nobody has, of
course, just that I can't find anyone I know well who has.)

I've been following the news on Notes for at least several years, even to
the point of buying some Lotus stock several years ago on the strength of
what I had read about Notes. (Alas, I sold it soon thereafter, before a
run-up in price.)

My point? Notes is nearly invisible in the non-corporate community I now
hang out in.

Who knows what weaknesses or bugs it has in it. Folks on our list probably
don't have much familiarity with it.

My hunch is that, as the "Wall Street Journal" reported yesterday, that IBM
overpaid for Lotus, that the notion of Notes becoming the universal
collaboration/communication option is flawed.

(I've been saying for a while that the Web serves that purpose better, and
that Web browsers will likely edge out Notes. Apparently I was hardly
prescient, as Netscape recently bought Collabra, which is pushing that
point exactly.)

--Tim May

---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Tue, 26 Sep 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

> At 6:52 PM 9/25/95, Jon Lasser wrote:
> 
> >Perhaps the Notes pricing scheme is sooo outrageous (by the standards of
> >a student like myself, and probably most others, if it's still anything
> >like it was at the 1.0 release) that mostpeople have had zero opportunity
> >to examine the program, let alone really have time to play with it?
> 
> I've never even _seen_ a copy of Notes running on any machine, nor do I
> know directly of _any_ of my colleagues who has. (Not saying nobody has, of
> course, just that I can't find anyone I know well who has.)

I've seen Notes running -- the Major-name discount software chain I used 
to work for (peon level) used it for communications.  It was slow and 
frustrating, but my access to it was only marginal... I certainly hadn't 
a chance to examine the code with a debugger, or even just play with it 
some.  But, knowing the software, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 
some serious bugs in the security code.

> My point? Notes is nearly invisible in the non-corporate community I now
> hang out in.
> 
> Who knows what weaknesses or bugs it has in it. Folks on our list probably
> don't have much familiarity with it.

Exactly... I think the product is guilty of security through obscurity, 
though I'm not sure it's particularly intended, just merely an artifact 
of the marketing strategy...

> My hunch is that, as the "Wall Street Journal" reported yesterday, that IBM
> overpaid for Lotus, that the notion of Notes becoming the universal
> collaboration/communication option is flawed.

Agreed.  OTOH, before the Web was known, it made a lot of sense for 
corporations...

Jon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lasser                <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>            (410)494-3072 
          Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
  You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.