Talk:Ray Ozzie

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[edit] Innovator?

It seems appropriate that Microsoft would pick someone like Ray ozzie to be it's Chief Software Architect. His record of innovation is dubious at best. I recall when Lotus Notes came out we called it "Lotus Bloats". It was horrifically expensive, had very high hardware requirements, and seemed slow and unwieldy. But, as you would expect, it was perfect for many big companies who had IT folks needing to justify their budgets. --Fandyllic 6:30 PM PDT 21 Jun 2006

The sad thing is, every Lotus Notes customer I've ever seen would have been far better served with a simple NetNews server.

[edit] VisiCalc?

"Ozzie was instrumental in the development of Lotus Symphony and Software Arts Inc.’s TK!Solver and VisiCalc..." - from his bio at Microsoft. Instrumental how exactly? His name doesn't appear in any of the information I've seen --Snori 00:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

My understanding is that he was one of the original software developers, but I don't have any references handy to back that up. If you feel it needs a reference, toss a {{fact}} and someone will get to it... eventually... :-) Warrens 02:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Ray's connection to Visicalc seems tenuous and mostly based on him working at Software Arts where Visicalc was originally developed. No significant mention of him in Dan Bricklin's Visicalc history site. You can read some info about Ozzie at Software Arts in Lessons learned from Ray Ozzie's early career at The Digitalyst blog, but it seems to say that he didn't work on Visicalc. --Fandyllic 6:25 PM PDT 21 Jun 2006

He was not one of the original developers of VisiCalc. He contributed at the margin to the Z80 (TRS-80) port when he first arrived at Software Arts. He then led development of the IL interpreter and runtime underlying the cross-platform portable version of VisiCalc and TK!Solver.

[edit] Chief Technical Officer

Yes, it was immediate on 15 June. From the MS press release: "The company announced that Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume the title of chief software architect" [1], and from his page on the MS site: "On June 15, 2006, Ozzie assumed the title of Microsoft chief software architect previously held by Chairman Bill Gates" [2]. --Snori 23:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)