http://nexist.sourceforge.net/groupware.html

-- MartinCleaver - 05 Nov 2001

Some interesting quotes from the article Tracing the Evolution of Social Software by Christopher Allen on Life With Alacrity

"I was looking for something that gathered together all uses of software that supported interacting groups .... Groupware was the obvious choice, but had become horribly polluted by enterprise groupware work." - Clay Shirky

"... the term 'groupware' hit the mainstream in 1988, when Robert Johansen wrote the best-selling business book Groupware: Computer Support for Business Teams. .... Unfortunately, it was this success that was also the downfall of the term 'groupware', for it got co-opted by marketing. Initially the co-opting was done by Lotus Notes, which I personally didn't feel deserved to be called groupware, as it was really more of a multi-user database that could be used to make groupware, but wasn't actually groupware. Then Microsoft further corrupted the term when they released Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook with calendaring features to compete with Lotus Notes, and called that groupware as well.

Thus today almost any software that supports multiple users can somewhat legitimately say that they are 'groupware'.

While the term 'groupware' was slowly losing its meaning, a new phrase, 'social software' was beginning to coming into vogue.

-- SamHasler - 16 Nov 2004