(2005-02-16) Jwz Contra Groupware

Jamie Zawinski on the horrors of GroupWare. "Groupware" is all about things like "WorkFlow", which means, "the chairman of the committee has emailed me this checklist, and I'm done with item 3, so I want to check off item 3, so this document must be sent back to my supervisor to approve the fact that item 3 is changing from "unchecked" to "checked", and once he does that, it can be directed back to committee for review." Nobody cares about that shit. Nobody you'd want to talk to, anyway. If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy... So I said, narrow the focus. Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid? "How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing Social Software (and these days, almost all software is social software). (Compelling)

He's referring to Novell's Hu La.

Tim Bray notes Live Chat and Wiki-s are not exactly what the Collaborat Ive-future visionaries of past years had in mind. But they seem to hit an awfully-big 80/20 point.

Ian Bicking notes I get paid to do that kind of stuff. I bet that's what a lot of us get paid to do. And yeah, I hate to admit it, but it's fucking lifeless. It doesn't make anyone happy. Sure, commerce isn't about Happiness (I guess), but it's not about life-sucking bureaucracy either. The word "EnterPrise" gives me a sinking feeling of sadness and grief.