Happy 20th Birthday, GroupWise

My brother called me to remind me that it was GroupWise's birthday. He is the one who talked me into doing email. Said it was going to be big, this was in 1989. He was right. I want to thank him for reminding me of the date and for putting me on the path that has sustained me the past 20 years.

20 years ago on 8/8/88 WordPerfect shipped their very first version of email. It was called WordPerfect Office 2.0 for DOS.

This Friday, 8/8/08 marks the 20th anniversary of Novell GroupWise, formerly known as WordPerfect Office.

The product was called WordPerfect 2.0 because it was a bundle of applications that were originally called WordPerfect Library. When WP Library 2.0 came out they added email, splitting the product into a Library version and an Office version.

WP Office product then expanded to other platforms, including WP Office for the Data General in 1989, then WP Office for Unix.

The original version only worked with a single post office. You couldn't send email to other organizations.

I remember the first email I ever received. I had just joined WordPerfect in May of 1989. I was sent an email from a friend, didn't understand what it was, so I deleted it. My mind couldn't grasp that someone had sent me a message, just to me, and that it had just showed up on my computer without me doing anything.

My friend came over to my desk and wanted to know why I had deleted his email. Even back then, the ability to track status was built in. He had sent me an invitation to his party and I had simply deleted the message. (Sorry Todd)

In Version 3, communication was possible between multiple post offices.

I worked at WordPerfect as a technical support operator. A few individuals were there who helped train me, including Brandon Black, CTO for Messaging Architects, and Trevor Harrison, owner and sysops for NGWList.

With the introduction of Post Office to Post Office communication, it became imperative to teach all of us how message flow worked, so we could troubleshoot a problem over the phone. In those days it was almost always rights issues in the wpcsin and wpcsout directories.

I developed a training course to help new GroupWise support technicians learn how to troubleshoot message flow. The course was called Squirrel 101 and every GroupWise/WP Office Tech support person had to sit through the course.

It pretended that a small squirrel was running around inside the GroupWise system dropping off and picking up files to be delivered. I believe Sean Neumann is still teaching it, or a variation of it.

I know that the certification test that many of helped write contained aspects of the concept. Squirrle 101 lives on, nearly 20 years later and taught many a GroupWise person how to figure out just where the message was and where it wanted to go.

In 1994, Novell purchased WordPerfect, then sold off most of the company but kept WP Office and renamed it to GroupWise, not before it was named Symmetry for about 3 months. But a company in the UK had the name already and threatened to take legal action, so the name was chosen as GroupWise.

Again, thanks to my brother Rodney Bliss who reminded me of the date, and for being a part of the success of GroupWise.

GroupWise has helped me pay my mortgage for nearly 20 years. Happy Birthday GroupWise, and may we see you live for another 20 years.