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Dan Bricklin of Software Garden, the visionary behind the spreadsheet program VisiCalc, which was the killer app for the Apple II, is close to a release version of wikiCalc. There will be several development models for the software. Here is some information for the Beta version, which is Open Source GPL: Installing wikiCalc as a Perl program. The source Perl code for wikiCalc is GPL. You will need Perl installed on your machine. tar and zip file versions are available. The current version number is 0.91 Beta.

The release version of wikiCalc is under the auspices of SocialText, in a project under the Open Source model, to be led by Dan Bricklin. The partitioning of wikiCalc will differ based on the location of the wikiCalc executable. If wikiCalc resides on the local machine of the data source provider, then the current architecture would render HTML for display via the server to the consumers of the data. If wikiCalc resides on the server then the data source is keystroke entry, whether locally on the server, or remotely via the Internet browser session. Although it can be run across the Internet from a server, multiple sessions will be a heavy load on that server; thus running it locally will likely lead to more satisfactory performance.

Other possible partitionings of function might be to create a markup notation which a newer version of wikiCalc could parse, re-calculate, and re-render as HTML.

Another development possibility might be for a wiki community to read and discuss the open-source code for wikiCalc.pl, etc. and to let the design express itself in wiki-fashion. --Ancheta Wis 16:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]