Jesper B. Kiær wrote:

>I thinks it is great to step into "another room" a get inspired from time
>to time. Notes is conceptually wise very beauttyful everything being a
>"note".. whether it is a docuemnt, a view, a ACL or Java code..it is all a
>Note
>
>(Historie of Lotus Notes:
>http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/today.nsf/lookup/NDHistory)
>
>
>

To add to the history: Tim Halvorson and Len Kawell were part of
Cutler's Seattle group that did MicroVax I and VAX/ELN. It was Cutler's
decision to forgo ISAM on VAX/ELN in favor of what became Rdb/ELN,
immediate precursor to Interbase. Steve Beckhardt was a long term
friend that I had worked with Computer Corporation of America. Steve
followed me to the nacent DEC database group where he worked on DBMS-11
(IDMS on a PDP-11). Steve then went to the VMS group where he
eventually did the VMS lock manager, the functional model for the
Interbase/Firebird lock managers. Steve left DEC for many of the same
reasons I did, and went to Apollo. DEC convinced him to come back as
VMS development manager, but after 4 hours he remembered why he left,
and joined Ray, Len, and Ken at Iris.

Iris had approximately the same relationship to Lotus that Interbase had
with Ashton-Tate. Steve and I got together periodically to figure out
how to cope with big, dumb, PC software companies. The real Notes story
is little to do with the official one. But there never was an official
relationship between Iris and Interbase for a number of reasons, one of
which was that our PC company masters were suing each other.