Goodbye, Lotus 1-2-3 276
walterbyrd writes "In 2012, IBM started retiring the Lotus brand. Now 1-2-3, the core product that brought Lotus its fame, takes its turn on the chopping block. IBM stated, 'Effective on the dates listed below, [June 11, 2013] IBM will withdraw from marketing part numbers from the following product release(s) licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:' IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0. Further, IBM stated, 'Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after September 30, 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs.'"
How about cutting Notes? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd take Outlook in a second over Notes.
Re:Will they be open-sourcing it? (Score:2, Insightful)
+1 funny.
...till Lotus won't run... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it's done.
The original /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Using / as the main way of navigating spreadsheets...
1-2-3 you gave me my start, not just in spreadsheets, but in computers. Thank you and goodbye, old friend.
Sniff.
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:5, Insightful)
When my company was bought, the parent company, who uses Notes, put us on Notes. Two years later, we're still fixing issues with the migration. Nobody likes this POS and that includes people in the parent company who've been using it for years.
Re:Will they be open-sourcing it? (Score:5, Insightful)
It shouldn't be an option. If they refuse to sell or license it, it should be automatically put into the public domain.
Re:Will they be open-sourcing it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see an abandonware law, too. For software, anyone applying for a copyright should have to put the source code in escrow, and it would be automatically released a certain period of time (say, 1 year) after the company stops selling it.
The PC "killer application" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate inertia.
Re:Will they be open-sourcing it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd take Outlook in a second over Notes.
No kidding. 1-2-3 dies and the abomination that's called "Notes" is allowed to live on. Tedious to use, painful to look at, the most powerful features usually not configured in a way to be useful. Die, Notes, die. Which of course is German for "The Notes, the.
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:4, Insightful)
What was the rational for this? Why would they continue on with such crap?
They've fallen for the sunk costs [wikipedia.org] fallacy [logicallyfallacious.com]. If they were to change to something else, they'd be admitting that they made a poor decision in choosing Lotus Notes in the first place.
Your mistake is thinking that companies use rational thought processes when making decisions. An even bigger mistake is thinking that the people making the decisions are looking out for the best interest of the company, instead of their own best interests.
Re:How about cutting Notes? (Score:4, Insightful)
[DOCTOR WHO] I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. [/DOCTOR WHO]
Years back I worked for a company that was acquired and we were forced to go to Notes (from Outlook IIRC). I found Notes to be a very intelligent piece of software. Unfortunately, it wasn't a friendly kind of intelligence that helped you out. Instead, it seemed to be a malicious sort of intelligence that would make Notes get progressively harder to use the more you tried to be productive.