At IBM Connect 2017, the message from IBM was “Notes/Domino 9.0 support will not end for at least 4 more years”.  Which to me sounded a bit like simply a stay of execution. Not so much a positive message as just a non-negative one.  But Ed Brill has published a blog post on the IBM Social Business blog that gives more clarity to the message and I think this helps.

In whitewater kayaking we say “look at the line, not at the rock”, meaning look where you want to go, not at what you are trying to avoid.  If you watch the rock, you’re probably going to hit it. But if you focus on the line through the rapid that you want to take, you will likely do well.

With that in mind, Ed’s blog post does a better job of looking at the line.  There is talk of should there be a Notes/Domino 10.  Currently the plan is to stick with the version format 9.0.1 FPx where FP now means Feature Pack instead of Fix Pack.  In this way we will get frequent releases that include new features as well as fixes, mirroring the cloud releases.  On the other hand, it seems to leave Notes/Domino stuck on version 9 forevermore.  Wouldn’t this be a great time to update the versioning altogether to align more with the steady stream of feature packs?  Other software does this, like Firefox, which is now on version 52.0.  N/D FP 8 was just released and FP 9 is already under development.  So perhaps it could start with FP 10 being simply Notes/Domino 10?