30th Anniversary of IRIS, and the 25th Anniversary of the Launch of Lotus Notes, 7th December 2014
Mat Newman December 7 2014 16:29:23
In the past couple of days Ray Ozzie has released an awesome series of Tweets recounting the history of IRIS and Lotus Notes. Coming directly from the founder and creator of Notes, this was a series I had to collate and republish here.Thanks Ray!
1/This Sunday, Dec 7, is the 25th anniv of Lotus Notes AND the 30th of my startup Iris! A brief story, in 22 tweets. pic.twitter.com/Q96GsgVLQd
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20142/In July ’84 I pitched an mail/collab app to @mkapor. He liked the concept .. but its char mode UI not so much. pic.twitter.com/JlYutFrEmO
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20143/Used Mac; tuned up pitch. Closed deal & founded Iris on 12/7/84 w/ @lenkawell & @timhalvorsen. Coded like mad! pic.twitter.com/6bkJQn9aDO
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20144/@billgates convinced me to bet on pre-rel Windows. But wanted icon/desktop UX, so had to build it at app level. pic.twitter.com/olqByCEGAd
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20145/Spent ~30% dev calories fighting memory constraints! After 15 months, beta deployed at our close partner Lotus. pic.twitter.com/DkTanJoGSB
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20146/Achieved MVP, workgroup-scale: nosql DB, forms/docs/views, IDE, richtext, client/server, replication, mail, secure. pic.twitter.com/CgocN24KWP
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20147/Mail was ‘just an app’. We ate our own cooking, but Lotus largely VAX so we built VMS & MCI mail gateways. pic.twitter.com/VPSEsRsqfX
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20148/Form based mail. Link, disk, AND end-to-end msg encr; RSA/DES (@RonRivest developed RC4 to unblock our US export!) pic.twitter.com/cgBm18Qtyd
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 20149/Directory was ‘just an app’. Address book had addrs, photos, pubkeys for people & servers, certs for orgs. pic.twitter.com/GvxKMDJLag
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201410/Threaded discussions were ‘just an app’. Supported either 2-level or full outline-style reply hierarchies. pic.twitter.com/XrLUuVYk2U
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201411/User-customized forms/views to suit apps’ needs. (BTW we had to impl our own overlapping win mgr on Win v1.) pic.twitter.com/852k6FAj97
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201412/User-created apps. Pure functional form/view language. Integrations, like this one w/Compuserve for News. pic.twitter.com/akaN6sCDCH
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201413/Looking at these old news stories is such a blast… pic.twitter.com/PrEWwdxGuw
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201414/We stress-tested by using our own apps for project mgmt. More and more complex views, forms, fields, functions. pic.twitter.com/Jm9wCZmQxx
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201415/Data was either local or server-based, accessed/replicated over LAN - or modem via X.PC modded for our env. pic.twitter.com/v3Hu6fn8zo
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201416/Win server, bizarrely with USER/GDI unloaded to recover memory. (We modded Win sources; MSFT accepted changes.) pic.twitter.com/nukstKTF50
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201417/Ugh; slog. Req’d appdev/mgmt features. Legal tussles. Win&OS2 cli&svrs. Nearly killed us. But SHIPPED on 12/7/89. pic.twitter.com/aonJT62Gtv
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201418/Struggled to get traction; shipped v2 ‘91 & stayed alive THANKS TO BELIEVERS eg @sheldonlaube @mcuban & many more pic.twitter.com/eYSeJ0uLbU
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201419/By ’93 w/ v3 we hit inflection! Value clear. LANs finally common. MSExchange appears & suddenly it's a MARKET! pic.twitter.com/dlmAKbFJPg
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201420/By ’97 v4.5, Lotus buys Iris & IBM buys Lotus. ~125M paid users @ ~$99-$249 ea.; ~$9 to ecosys per $1 we earned. pic.twitter.com/RiSJU1LeqP
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201421/From Notes to @talkoteam I've been so fortunate: such amazing teams; such amazing apps. http://t.co/Zcjy1Q8pYG pic.twitter.com/iSm2Br0cBO
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 201422/Mitch,Tim,Len,Iris,Lotus,IBM,Partners& you who've used our work, THANK YOU for the opp’y afforded us. Happy anniv! pic.twitter.com/cetVxy8ZB1
— Ray Ozzie (@rozzie) December 4, 2014Congratulations, and Happy Anniversaries!
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