# The History of Gnumeric

&gnum; was created in August, 1998 by Miguel de Icaza almost a year after starting the GNOME Desktop project. Historically the spreadsheet was a killer application, an application so useful it gave businesses the reason they needed to buy computers. Similarly &gnum; gives people a great reason to choose GNOME. &gnum; also provided a valuable opportunity for developers to stress test various technologies needed for the GNOME Desktop. Miguel eventually moved on to other projects after founding software development company Ximian.

Jody Goldberg became the maintainer of Gnumeric midway through 2000 in recognition of the work he was doing.

&gnum; reached a major milestone on December 31, 2001 with the successful release of Version 1.0.

Who knows what the future will bring for &gnum;. There is still more history that has not yet been written.