Java Developer Says He Built, Launched Basic Open Source Office Suite In 30 Days 266
alphadogg writes "A freelance Java developer claims it took him only 30 days to build and launch a basic open source office suite that runs on multiple OSes. Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said. The office suite was built with NetBeans and uses many popular open source Java libraries. That allowed him to built the program in 30 days, he said, a process that he documented daily on YouTube (video). The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet. Goubard's Amsterdam company, Japplis, launched the suite, which is available under an Apache 2.0 license. This license allows companies to change and redistribute the code internally without having to share the new code publicly, he said."
Re:Redistributing the code internally (Score:4, Interesting)
Completely true. I used to work for a very large company of > 150k employees who decreed that we wouldn't be allowed to touch certain types of Open Source software with a 10-foot pole, completely missing the fact that their entire line of copier products was based on Linux...
There was a complete disconnect between the PHB-side of the business and R,D&E.
Not really - the code running the copier was pretty much useless without the copier; and few companies have the manufacturing ability to build copiers. Releasing the code isn't going to impact them competitively so it makes sense to use GPL'd code if it works and is cheaper than rolling your own. On the other hand, using GPL'd code in a stand alone document management system that runs on someone else's widely available hardware would not make sense; because any competitor could then resell your code without the investment in developing it and potentially undercut your pricing.
Same was done with VB controls in 1990s (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember something very similar being done with VB controls in the 1990s. I bought a package at Books-A-Million that was just a wrapper around a full-functional spreadsheet control implemented as a VBX. I wish I could remember the name of it! I can see it on a sale table with a lot of other software. Those were the good old days.
If it "uses many popular open source Java libraries" it would be easy to put them together. I know there are classes that read and write Excel files and probably others. I guess there are spreadsheet controls, rich text controls, etc. Good example of MVC component use. Use a component to read file into M, and use components as V, leaving C to basically direct traffic. So component software is a reality, especially in Java where you don't have inter-language barriers.
A big win for code reuse. Probably zero people care about this suite, but a lot of people want to have Excel versions of data in your model and you can throw it in easily.