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Jamie Zawinksi: "Groupware Bad"

I don't know how I missed this rant on groupware, the fall of Netscape and what's wrong with enterprise software development. It's fantabulous.

Nat was in town, and he stopped by to say hi and chat, and he said, "So we've got this big pile of code we're going to release, and we're going to build an open source groupware system! It's going to be awesome!"

And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy.

It's more than a rant. He has some points about how commercial software isn't really user driven, and hence why it sucks. It aligns with why I think a lot of truly interesting things in software are happening more in the consumer-driven or small-team-driven markets than in big software firms (one Oracle post below excepted, the other vindicated :-)

Posted by Mark Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:03:00 PM | permalink |