Lotus Notes: A cautionary tale about innovation and the pitfalls of building from scratch
By
Matthew Guay
Summary
A retrospective analysis of Lotus Notes, the groundbreaking 1989 collaboration platform that pioneered features like encryption, rich text, attachments, read receipts, and wiki-style links long before they became standard. The article explores how Lotus Notes was ahead of its time as a multi-purpose collaboration tool rather than just an email client, and discusses the lessons its history offers about innovation, starting from scratch versus building on existing systems, and the dangers of trying to be everything to everyone.
Source
bskyLotus Notes: A cautionary tale about innovation and the pitfalls of building from scratchbuttondown.comKey quotes
· 3 pulledLotus Notes, in 1989, had encryption two years before Pretty Good Privacy brought it to normal email, had rich text formatting and attachments before MIME, had read receipts, notifications, a directory of users, and wiki-style cross-message links.
Lotus Notes was the future of communications, a decade before laptops had WiFi.
You either loved it, or were using it wrong.
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