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Tech: Nonprofit Company Builds Interpersonal Information Manager

Mercury News | 10/20/2002 | Dan Gillmor: Software idea may be just crazy enough to work

Dammit! This looks like exactly the same kind of thing I want to do!! This is both very encouraging and a “I’m late to the game” kind of feeling…

Mitch Kapor smiles at the half-serious question: “Are you crazy to try something like this?’’

For more than a year, Kapor and his small team have been working on what they’re calling an open-source “Interpersonal Information Manager.’’

That makes the Chandler business plan perhaps as important as the product itself. Kapor, founder of the software company that sold the influential and hugely successful Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program in the 1980s, is funding the initial work through a non-profit foundation. Why does this matter? For one thing, it may succeed. For another, it could be a model for other such projects.</i>

The best place for information about this product seems to be Mitch Kapor’s weblog about it, on the OSA Foundation website.