In the intervening years, IBM had forked it's own version of OpenOffice to create Lotus Symphony, before making a significant donation back to the Apache Foundation of the code behind it. Many would already have been aware that - in reality - none of these products had received any significant updates for over a decade, so the announcement made last year was merely a formal indication that their time really was up, and customers using these products should move on. WFS means that a product will no longer receive any updates, nor will customers be able to request assistance for these products. WFM is the term used to signify that a product will no longer be available for purchase by customers. This - of course - followed on from the announcement that these iconic products would be withdrawn from marketing effective the 11th of June, 2013.

A quiet farewell Lotus 1-2-3, Organizer and Smartsuite Mat Newman Octo15:33:21Last week a fairly significant date passed without much fanfare: The Withdrawal From Support (WFS) for some of the best desktop software ever created in Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Organizer and the Lotus Smartsuite office package.

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