Grant will be used to develop interoperability test suite
BOSTON, Mass. July 24, 2003 The GNOME Foundation announced that the Gnumeric project has received a grant from the Open Source Application Foundation. The $4,000 grant will be used to develop a test suite to enhance interoperability between Gnumeric and other spreadsheet programs, particularly the market leading spreadsheet program. The goal of the grant and test suite is to ensure that values and functions translate seamlessly between proprietary and open source spreadsheet programs. Funds from the grant will be used to pay spreadsheet users to create files that test one or several of the more than 350 functions available in the market-leading proprietary spreadsheet software.
“This grant will be used to ensure that calculated values are the same between spreadsheets created on the market leading proprietary program and Gnumeric.” said Jody Goldberg of Ximian, Inc., Gnumeric Project lead and GNOME Foundation board member. “The test suite that will be developed through this grant will be available to all open source spreadsheet programs.”
Gnumeric is a free software spreadsheet program with better analytics than the leading proprietary spreadsheet programs. The project, which was founded five years ago, is a leading open source spreadsheet program, and is available on a number of popular open source desktop environments, including GNOME.
“The availability of a strong set of interoperable productivity applications is key to the success of Linux on the desktop,” explained Mitch Kapor, chairman of the Open Source Applications Foundation. “Because of my background in spreadsheets, I have a particular interest in open source spreadsheet applications. I am therefore pleased to be able to make a small contribution to strengthening not just the Gnumeric spreadsheet, but interoperability among the different open source spreadsheet programs, and compatibility with the leading commercial product. We also hope that this project will help build the community of volunteers contributing to these projects, and lead to even closer collaboration between OpenOffice, Gnumeric, Kspread and other open source spreadsheet projects.”
The grant will give open source spreadsheet developers an invaluable testing tool and will give Gnumeric users confidence that they have true interoperability with other spreadsheets.
URLs of Organizations Listed in this Press Release
GNOME: http://www.gnome.org Gnumeric: http://www.gnumeric.org Open Source Applications Foundation: http://www.osafoundation.org OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org KDE: http://www.kde.org
About GNOME
GNOME is a free software project that is developing a complete, easy to use desktop for GNU/Linux (more commonly known as Linux), BSD, Solaris, HP-UX and a variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than 700 computer developers, including over 100 full-time, paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.
About the GNOME Foundation
Comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. The Foundation provides organizational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project and helps determine its vision and roadmap. GNOME is an entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices. The modern architecture and design of GNOME includes a technically advanced application development platform and a powerful end-user desktop environment. Major leading software industry and computer manufacturers support the GNOME development effort, which is led by a worldwide community of volunteers. More information on GNOME is available at www.gnome.org.