Bean is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

, free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 word processor

Word processor

A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

 currently available for Mac OS X only. According to its creator James Hoover, it is not meant to replace Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

, but to be a lean word processor that was beautiful and user friendly. Many of the operations of Bean are carried out by the underlying Cocoa

Cocoa (API)

Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...

 framework of Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

; the name Bean is a play on Cocoa and Java, two popular programming frameworks

Software framework

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...

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The design of Bean was heavily influenced by Marten Van De Kraats' article "Lean Word Processor Specifics" http://lowendmac.com/myturn/010228.html.