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On Tuesday, with no fanfare, IBM closed the last chapter in the life of one of the most iconic early computer programs, Lotus 1-2-3, when it withdrew support for the final build of the software.
IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x, and Organizer have now officially all passed their end of life support date and, according to IBM's website, "No service extensions will be offered" ( http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS913-091 ) – not that anyone is seriously using the spreadsheet any more.
It's a sadly muted end for what was, at one time, the world's premier spreadsheet. Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the first applications that made IBM's original PC a serious business tool, but it fell by the wayside due to poor coding decisions, failure to adapt, and the crushing tactics of Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday October 03 2014, @11:28AM
I was with IBM when they finally gave up on using Lotus SmartSuite internally (back when we were probably the only major company using it) and finally bought a site license for MS office (previously, only externally facing roles got office, because if you send a client a WordPro file, you got laughed out of the room. This was 2001 or 2002. When even the people who make the software give up on it, you know the writing's on the wall.
I'm surprised it's hung on this long.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Friday October 03 2014, @12:24PM
perhaps it should be open sourced? It would seem there is something that could be learned...
(Score: 3, Informative) by MrGuy on Friday October 03 2014, @12:58PM
This is IBM we're talking about. It's been a few years since I checked the standings, but for over a decade they led the yearly "number of patents filed" list. They accumulate IP like nobody's business. They're not likely to give something away unless there's a clear business benefit to themselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jcross on Friday October 03 2014, @01:46PM
Yes, but they are also very supportive of open source projects, and IIRC used their huge IP portfolio to counterattack against SCO in defense of Linux. My guess is that if they don't open source 1-2-3, it will be out of inertia rather than greed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MrGuy on Friday October 03 2014, @03:11PM
IBM embraced Linux because they saw it as an opportunity to sell products and services on top of Linux, not out of altruism.
And you're wrong on IVM's relationship to SCO. SCO are the ones who sued IBM, alleging IBM illegally contributed Unix copyrighted code (which SCO purported to own) to Linux. IBM fought back vigorouslly on a number of fronts, validating the concept of OSS. But they didn't give away IP or assert any against SCO. The shovel they would have buried SCO with was that SCO never owned the Unix copyrights in the first place.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Friday October 03 2014, @09:57PM
You're absolutely right they're not doing it out of altruism, but according to their website they have over 600 devs working on over 100 open source projects, which is a pretty significant contribution in my book. Even though it's done for profit, I'm still grateful.
It's also true that SCO attacked first, but IBM did use some of their patent portfolio in the counterclaims. It was a small part of a bigger strategy, but still.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM#IBM_counterclaims_against_SCO [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @08:48PM
Perhaps the best one to open source was the last MS-DOS version -- I believe large sections (or all) was written in assembler and it was really fast on that older hardware.
Separate note, I still have a few .123 files around and they seem to open correctly in Excel 97.