The Socialcalc 1.1.0 release is out, and you can download it and follow development progress at Socialcalc.org. It’s a release that’s mainly meant for developers, sys admins, advanced uses, and early adopters. It adds the capability for named ranges, along with some bug fixes. The structure is in place, now, for open development on Socialcalc’s core.
I got Socialcalc up and running on MacOSX without too much trouble. I had to get a few extra cpan modules and install them. Then it worked with perfect smoothness in my browser. I could set up a quick demo page to play around with the features, or I could set my host name, ftp and other network information to get Socialcalc running over the network. Actually using the spreadsheet, especially in collaboration with other people, will take some reading and experimentation. Maybe I’ll test it with my co-housing mates to track our bills, though I’m sure that’s a terribly boring example. The other personal use that springs to mind is that I could use it for role-playing games, for example in Amber during the auction-based character creation process where we all allocate points to each others’ personality traits. As you can see, I am not much of a spreadsheet user, but I can appreciate how nifty this software is — especially that anyone gets to hack on its code.
It has been very interesting working with Dan Bricklin, Tony Bowden, and Casey West on the project. I’m getting a crash course in visionary spreadsheet geekitude as well as in open source licensing, legal issues, and politics. As a sort of professional dilettante, I have really been loving this job because of working with incredibly smart people who are willing to explore complicated difficult ideas.
Casey is on his way to YAPC::NA, giving 2 talks, Abuse Perl and MochiKit:Good Tools for the Web Developer, a strangely good cop/bad cop approach. And though Tony is on his way to ITI 2007 in Croatia, he’ll also be walking through some features of Socialcalc with me, as well as keeping us real as we hash out details of the CPAL license draft. While I know Dan is busy with podcasts, especially from this week’s Open Source Summit, I’m hoping that he will also work through examples of practical application of our license draft with me; he has been amazingly helpful in explaining the details of the flaws in our existing license, with concrete examples.
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