Lotus drops separate license for Domino Designer
by Volker Weber
Ed Brill says:
In fact, in some ways, making Domino Designer available to all Notes users is a return to the product's roots. - When Lotus Notes was introduced, all Notes users had the application development tools as part of the Notes license and product. - At some point, we changed to selling Domino Designer (originally Notes Designer) separately, and in my mind, that has been a real barrier to bringing new developers into the Notes/Domino community.
Comments
real barrier to bringing new developers into the Notes/Domino community
It's taken a while for that to become clear, what?
I think they are forgetting the real "real barrier" which is complexity. When Designer was originally free we had forms, views and @functions so it was not to difficult for a non IT person to get started as a Notes developer. It is a vastly more complex (yes feature rich) development environment and I know if I was starting out and was presented with DDE I would run and hide.
Carlos, that's what they cannot change.
Dropping the separate license for Designer is the right thing. Will it attract new developers? We will see.
Microsoft has several IDE too. Sharepoint Designer, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Express, the Expression line, SharpDevelop and in some way Microsoft Access (although this one looks quite abandoned to me) and probably some more. And the perspectives of Eclipse would make some things easier.
The problem is that when Designer was bundled with Notes the applications that the people built were not looking much different than the applications that came with the platform. This has changed. At the end making an application free does not guarantee a success but it can be a good start.
What I see missing is an "express" version of Domino Server (free for single user/developer, and a bit crippled compared to a production version).
EMC Documentum is an example of much more expensive platform with free developer edition.
cool - dann gibt's den Designer ja auch für Mac OS X?
So you'll still need at least one client CAL and a server license in order to (re-)start developing?
In practice, yes. In theory, no. As long as you can live without a server, you don't need anything. But clearly, the server licensing part needs work.
Indeed. Looks like they are working on something.
See this link: Announcing Notes/Domino 8.5.1 part 1: Free Domino Designer!
Comments 41-44
@Olaf
Afaik details about Designer on OSX will not be published before Lotusphere.
