At Lotusphere 2010 IBM introduced Project Vulcan. By the looks of it it looks like this is not "foilware" but actually working software. No I do not belive that you could by IBM Lotus Vulcan as a product any time soon. I see it as project term for the future workplace, where IBM tries to incorporate several technologies.
IBM did not aquire Java, Orcale did. I do belive that this will mean less development based on the Lotus Expeditor framework. For Lotus developers the focus will be on X-Pages, CSS, HTML5, and ofcourse Web Services.
There will come the time where notes application based on traditional Forms an Views and LotusScript code stored in events will be considered as Notes Legacy Applications. These type of applications will be difficult to embed in the new Lotus offerings like Lotus Connections, Lotus Quikr and in the cloud like LotusLive.
IBM has included X-Page rendering in the 8.5.1 Lotus Notes client. A smart move but I do think this is only to ease transition from a Rich Client architechture to a Web based one (Project Vulcan?). Lotus developers would do better to focus on X-Pages, CSS, HMTL-5, REST for future development.
