[ih] question re. Lotus Notes (not quite Internet history)

[Brian E Carpenter]

You need to follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to Iris Associates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Associates). When I joined IBM in 1997, it had just become the 11th Commandment that "Thou shalt use Lotus Notes", although I actually managed to continue using Unix-based email as well for almost 10 years. To be honest Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino were very hard to use at IBM scale in 1997, although I suppose they worked well for smaller customers. They (the developers at Iris) were trying hard to integrate with this Internet thingie in 1997, so I was invited to visit Iris at Westford MA, a rare privilege. Iris was desperate to retain its own Route 128 culture at that time, being insulated from Lotus culture down in Cambridge, which itself was desperate to resist the creeping infiltration of IBM culture. The first, second and third lines of defense for Iris were "too busy to host visitors" but apparently they thought I wasn't dangerous, having only just joined IBM and being active in the IAB.

It was interesting. Very business-casual, and they had free snack machines, which was either a nod to Silicon Valley culture, or a dig at Lotus and IBM. Apart from that, I don't remember any technical specifics of my visit.

But my goodness, the Notes gateway to SMTP when it came was downright horrible. I can't remember the issues, but I think a lot of them were because Notes Mail supported rich text and the mapping to MIME was freaky and non-commutative. Text/Plain worked but most internal users didn't know how to limit themselves to that. It took several years before the Notes/SMTP gateways were satisfactory.

As for Irene Greif, I can't help you. However, Wikipedia says "she left academia in 1987 to join Lotus" and Notes was still well hidden inside Iris at that time. I expect she has email... yes, not hiding: igreif at alum.mit.edu .

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 09-Aug-20 11:20, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I was just having a nice chat, when the topic of Lotus Notes came up.  
> My companion noted that Ray Ozzie was the lead developer, based on Plato 
> Notes.  I recall that Irene Greif has a major role.  Anybody remember 
> the history?
> 
> Miles Fidelman
>