Ah yes, Code: It's Trivial[1]

Jeff Atwood quoting Benjamin Pollack

" Developers think cloning a site like StackOverflow is easy for the same reason that open-source software remains such a horrible pain in the ass to use. When you put a developer in front of StackOverflow, they don't really see StackOverflow. What they actually see is this:

  create table QUESTION (ID identity primary key,
  TITLE varchar(255),
  BODY text,
  UPVOTES integer not null default 0,
  DOWNVOTES integer not null default 0,
  USER integer references USER(ID));
  create table RESPONSE (ID identity primary key,
  BODY text,
  UPVOTES integer not null default 0,
  DOWNVOTES integer not null default 0,
  QUESTION integer references QUESTION(ID))

"

[1] http://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-trivial/ Appropriately enough the blog is complaining about the attitude being displayed on Hacker News

Uh huh. And the important part of Access is the front-end. And no one from the open source or hacker community has even come close, not even in the same ballpark, not in 20 years now. Twenty years!

So clearly there is, in fact, a big deal. If you think you can write Access in a weekend, feel free, post it here when you're done. Good luck!

Access is the frontend

The big deal is that in an office you tend to have access to the following only:

* Microsoft Office (slightly out of date version) * Internet Explorer 8 or less * Adobe Reader * Crappy SharePoint installation

If someone can find a way to replace Access that doesn't involve going through corporate IT's 50-year long approval/installation process, it'll be a massive hit.