Techophiles of a certain age will well remember Mitch Kapor. Founder of Lotus Development Corporation, and chief visionary and/or author of such groundbreaking software as Lotus 1-2-3, Improv, Manuscript and Agenda.
Mitch — an interesting guy beyond the software business — was out of Lotus well before IBM bought it. He spent some time on the beach, and some more as a venture capitalist.
Now Kapor is apparently getting back into the game, building an open-source personal information manager for small-to mid-sized businesses. Oh yes — it’ll run under the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
There’s a ton that’s wrong with the software business today (a subject for a different and longer post some other time), but it’s mighty encouraging to see people like Mitch Kapor and Dave Winer finding the fertile ground between Microsoft’s redwoods.
