Notes/Domino 8.5.2, unshackled, and an update on Domino Designer’s free use cases

April 18 2010

If you have been reading the blogs or PlanetLotus, you've probably noticed by now that with the most recent beta ("code drop 4") of Notes/Domino 8.5.2, we've lifted the confidentiality veil and given testers the opportunity to blog about what they're seeing.  So far, Erik Brooks has the only detailed entry, writing about a new class, some XPages stuff, and silent server failover.  However, I expect to see more postings this week, as several other bloggers have asked to confirm the new license agreement in CD4 and are planning to share their experiences.

This is also a good opportunity to talk about a change coming in the Domino Designer 8.5.2 license.  When we made Domino Designer free with 8.5.1, one loose end was that you couldn't connect it to a server without having to buy a Domino Enterprise client access license (CAL).  That basically meant it was useful only for kicking the tires.  In Domino Designer 8.5.2, we're clarifying the license to match the original intent -- you will be able to use the free Designer to "develop and test applications in a non-production environment".  In the interim, if you decide to use Domino in the Amazon EC2 cloud, the agreement for that service also allows you to use the free Domino Designer there as well (since the EC2 instance is also restricted to develop/test).

I don't think we've formally announced a ship date for Notes/Domino 8.5.2, but the target is Q3 2010.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8.5  Add/View Comments [25]

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  1. 1  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 4/18/2010 10:51:03 PM

    So if you want to use Designer to put an application into production, you have to pay for the Designer license?

  1. 2  Martijn de Jong http://www.socialsoftwareblog.nl | 4/19/2010 3:00:57 AM

    @1 interesting idea indeed. Ed's words could also be interpreted as that you don't have to pay for the Designer license as you don't actually use the Designer client to put a application in production. In that case you would only have to pay for a Designer license if you would use the Designer to make changes to an application straight on the production server and of course no sane developer would ever do that ;-)! It would be an interesting way of IBM to promote proper developing practices, but that might be an too Utopian thought.

  1. 3  Mike Brown http://www.browniesblog.com | 4/19/2010 6:19:32 AM

    Will the 8.5.2 Notes Client support Ubuntu 10.04, Ed?

  1. 4  Graham Dodge  | 4/19/2010 6:39:42 AM

    @2... you can't pay for a Designer license under any circumstances. There is no price associated with that bundle of code that we call 'Designer' and you can't buy it from a Lotus Business Partner or even direct from IBM. Anyone and everyone can download the Designer code for no charge so saying "... you would only have to pay for a Designer license if you would use the Designer to make changes to an application straight on the production server..." is not a true representation of the situation.

    The catch is in your use of the words "production server". If you have a valid "production server" then you must have paid for a server license and some form of CAL (or the CEO bundle) therefore you are entitled to use the Designer client because you have valid CALS. If you don't have any valid CALS in your organization then you might theoretically have to pay for a Designer license but if you went to IBM they would just sell you a CAL and voila... you have your Designer license all ready to run.

    Unless... you are an organization who is running a Domino Utility server to provide a web site but you don't use Notes email or other Notes internal apps therefore you might legitimately have (say) 100 server PVU but no CALS. If that's the case then I'm not sure how you would publish new data to your website or read the data collected by your website but that's a separate issue.

    I think this whole discussion was always about the splitting of hairs. IMHO IBM's intention was always clear and now they've just updated the documentation to say what they always meant.

  1. 5  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/19/2010 6:52:50 AM

    @1/2/4 Graham is right -- simply, we don't sell Domino Designer anymore. We sell two CALs -- messaging and enterprise. To access a production Domino server with Designer, you need a Domino Enterprise CAL (US$159 list price). Otherwise, it's free to download and use.

  1. 6  Michael Kobrowski  | 4/19/2010 7:18:25 AM

    Ed, as always, you can't get into details about what part of Q3 for 8.5.2, can you? :) Beginning? End?

    With 8.5.1 FP3 only having 9 fixes so far, does that one make sense? Or is there more to come?

    Michael

  1. 7  Robert Reese  | 4/19/2010 10:30:41 AM

    Now if we could just get a free server license for a development server.

  1. 8  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/19/2010 10:50:37 AM

    Totally free? Can't get there. But the Amazon EC2 model charges you for hosting time/space only, not for the Domino license.

  1. 9  Erik Brooks  | 4/19/2010 10:57:43 AM

    @6 - If I had to guess, 8.5.1FP3 will be May, we'll se a bunch a fixes coming in to the FL DB over the next 2-3 weeks. For 8.5.2 I'd guess September.

    @8 - I had somebody in my office (interestingly enough, an ASP .Net developer now developing with XPages) ask about that. A free Domino server download for single-user development only would go a long ways into promoting the platform. It seems like the next logical step after making Designer free.

  1. 10  Greg  | 4/19/2010 2:48:22 PM

    Will 8.5.2 come in a 64-bit flavour for Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04?

    If not, where on the roadmap does 64-bit Lotus Domino/Notes become viable?

    And where should I be campaigning to make it happen?

    Kind regards,

    Greg.

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/19/2010 3:08:37 PM

    @10 say more about your requirements... it's not in 8.5.2. What is driving the question? Feel free to email offline.

  1. 12  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 4/19/2010 4:42:41 PM

    @8 and @9, I agree some type of "free" or cripple-ware Domino server for development purposes would help get it out into the trenches more, to developers not already using XPages. First they need to rectify the 64K limit....I can just imagine the posts on that from a .NET or Java developer. It is 2010 right? We need at least 65K ;)

  1. 13  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 4/19/2010 5:17:00 PM

    @8, @9, @12

    If someone wants a production server, a "crippled" license already exists - Lotus Domino Express - Just don't partition and cluster. (Also DA is also prohibited which stinks - I feel that should be lifted as even the small customers need to suck in that AD directory or customer database for mail addressing.)

    Buy a Lotus Collaboration Express CAL (about $160 w/support for year) and the server is free for Express customers. No extra $$$/processor for a server.

    So you can get a completely functioning development AND production system for 1 user for $160. That user then has Domino based mail and apps for $160.

    That's far cheaper than SBS standard (around $1200), cheaper than Foundations Start (around $1000), and still cheaper than Apple Server ($500).

    If they don't want to load their new Domino server on some laptop or workstation for a development server, and maintain an actual server, Domino ASP providers, like us, are happy to host them. We don't care if you are just one CAL. It's how we got started 8-10 years ago, there weren't very many Domino ASP providers back then with competitive pricing.

    Tripp Black

    Mindwatering

  1. 14  Rob Stitt  | 4/19/2010 5:49:17 PM

    @7 @8 @12 @13: I also really wish there was a way to maintain a "test" server for free. It chafes management (and me) to have to pay FULL price to have a server that I use load & test Domino server code and some other email functinality!! I need the server to practice installs and satisfy our QA/Change Management...and occasionally for limited testing of email flow, etc. There are only a very few "users" with access to this server...we aren't even doing application development on it. We simply load patches, new releases, etc. on it...and sometimes use it to test email flow with our test email gateways. Other vendors of other products have typically not charged for that kind of usage...

  1. 15  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 4/19/2010 8:57:08 PM

    @14

    I agree completely. However, I typically see free when the software packages are more "appliance". We run a virtualized environment and that major player doesn't allow an extra 4 processors just sitting around either. But they do allow their free standalone version -- you just cannot fail to it, sounds familiar to Notes clustering.

    That said, I would call a 'test server' a question for IBM Lotus sales. There are things allowed such as "warm backups" (not cluster member) which are fine as long as users access it. There are also special package bundles negotiated. Test and generic id's have been well documented as non-CALs (free) as long as the real-users had them, but the server requiring a CAL has never been officially revealed.

    Warm-backup link:

    { Link }

    Generic user id's when CALs needed:

    { Link }

    Tripp Black

  1. 16  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 4/19/2010 8:58:23 PM

    15b. Typo in post:

    warm backups allowed as long as users DON'T access it.

    Sorry for any confusion.

    Tripp

  1. 17  Erik Brooks  | 4/19/2010 10:12:03 PM

    @12/@13 - NSF is still a great DB for many apps despite the 64K limits. That said, with those addressed and simple JOINing (Query Access views from NSFDB2, but without DB2) it would *easily* be the DB of choice for 85-90% of business apps.

    There's an obvious WANT for NSF-style dbs (see CouchDb, NoSQL, etc.) it's just that people don't know about NSF. The free Designer is helping gain more traction there, and a free dev server license would be the last piece of the puzzle.

  1. 18  GarryL  | 4/20/2010 2:59:36 AM

    A free-for-non-commercial/non-production development Domino server is definately something that should be out there. Sure IBM has to make money but this is just to get people using this stuff. If they want to go further - sell the application, use in live enviroments etc - then they have to buy licences. At the minute its a buy-before-you-try option. In these days of free everywhere that model just does not sit right anymore.

    @17 Agree completely. NoSQL type databases are really starting to come into their own and NSF's are an ideal store that has been proven in production for a couple of decades. Certainly could be an good avenue to explore. And yes, the 64K limit does need fixing.

  1. 19  Greg  | 4/20/2010 7:23:46 AM

    @11 - Ed, at a corporate level, we're gradually migrating from WinXP Pro 32-bit to Win7 Enterprise 64-bit with minimum 4Gb RAM. Applications such as Lotus Notes and MS Office have become behemoths and users are becoming more demanding of their tools, expecting software to be more responsive and more robust. Same expectations at a consumer level. The user experience is hugely improved by the ability to access more RAM.

    I'm not singling out IBM, but why is it taking software vendors so long to roll out 64-bit versions of their software to take advantage of 64-bit hardware and 64-bit OS's?

  1. 20  Pierre  | 4/22/2010 1:25:51 AM

    @19, to take really advantage of 64-bit HW, Notes would have to require more than 4GB of virtual user memory space (32-bit apps on 64-bit Windows have access to 4GB). On a server I can see that happning with 2,000 users but on a client, this is extremely unlikely.

  1. 21  John Kost  | 4/22/2010 11:13:43 AM

    Love the EC2 image for development. A small instance is cheaper than the electricity (kwh) we pay up here in Toronto.

    This NoSQL movement could be a boom as well for Domino. Somebody from Lotus/IBM should start presenting at these gatherings (usually in around San Francisco) and show them how real men/woman do unstructured/document-centric applications that scale really well.

    The 64k/64g limits do need looking at in this terabyte age, but we can cope with that, for now, but do get to work on a next-gen ODS.

  1. 22  Rene  | 5/8/2010 10:25:14 AM

    @11, @19, @20, When using other applications needing an OS running on 64 bits, it would be very nice if Lotus Notes also runs in 64 bits mode on that OS. Yes, it's possible to run a 32 bits application on 64 bits OS. But in Linux the dependencies are must easier to manage/install when application and OS are the same bits level.

    Lotus Notes client must be possible to get installed on 64 bits OS. On Windows 7 64 bits, no problem.

    I've Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP2 running on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 64 bits. But it's a nightmare to get it installed/working. A lot of manually tweaking, get 32 bits libs and I have still one issue with the icons in the bookmark bar, navigations and icons on buttons in databases. They are scrambled vertical lines. Icons on toolbars are fine.

    Also the Designer and Admin client are still not native available for Ubuntu 32 & 64 bits. I've installed it separately with wine.

    We have many customers who wants to switch over to linux. But when the Notes client is terrible to get installed on a 64 bits version then they going to look for alternatives.

    So let IBM provide a roadmap when they will support it. Maybe some customers will wait for it, if support is very soon...

  1. 23  Kevin  | 5/9/2010 10:32:15 AM

    @22 Rene, I would love to hear how to get Notes client running on Ubuntu 64bit 10.04 LTS - not having Notes client working has been an absolute nightmare.

  1. 24  Marky Goldstein http://www.rosa.com | 5/21/2010 9:41:20 AM

    I hope that Notes development starts to accelerate again... I really wonder what is happening within IBM... this thing needs a boost!

  1. 25  Alex  | 7/30/2010 9:59:57 AM

    And what about the Domino Designer for... Mac? Any idea? THX!