JasperReports was started in 2001 by Teodor Danciu when he was faced with the task of evaluating reporting tools for a project he was working on. The existing solutions, he found, were too expensive for his project's budget; therefore, he decided to write his own reporting engine. The project for which he was evaluating reporting tools got canceled, but nevertheless, he started to work on JasperReports in his spare time. He registered the project on SourceForge.net in September 2001. Shortly after, he started getting emails from interested potential users, even though he had not yet released any code. JasperReports version 0.1.5 was released in November 2001. Since then, JasperReports has become immensely popular; it is currently one of the most popular Java reporting tools available.
At first, JasperReports was basically a one-man project, with Teodor working on it in his spare time. Then, in April 2005, a company called JasperSoft was formally launched at the MySQL User Conference in California. JasperSoft now sponsors JasperReports' development, allowing Teodor and other JasperSoft developers to work full-time on JasperReports. JasperSoft also provides commercial support and services for JasperReports and related products, including the iReport visual designer for JasperReports. In addition to providing support for JasperReports and iReport, JasperSoft sells commercial applications incorporating JasperReports. JasperSoft has raised over 8 million dollars in venture capital funding, no small feat in these post dot-com days. This investment is a clear indication that venture capitalists have confidence in the success of JasperSoft and, by extension, in the success of JasperReports.
