It turns out that when IBM Corp gave up on its ambitious OfficeView development and decided to offer Lotus Development Corp’s Notes instead, it tied Lotus down to an onerous agreement under which Lotus had to pay IBM between 25% and 33% of the value of all Notes sales, regardless of who made them, the Wall Street Journal reveals. Overall Notes sales are expected to double to $100m this year, and to $200m next, making the payments to IBM significant for Lotus. Now, says the Journal, it has persuaded IBM to end the agreement in return for Lotus making an additional commitment to the development of software for IBM’s OS/2 operating system. Last month Lotus publicly renewed its commitment to OS/2 and said it would produce a series of new OS/2 products, but didn’t mention the Notes side deal.
