Google Open Sources Etherpad, Piratepad Launches

Thomas Nybergh writes "The Etherpad code was released by Google under the Apache license a few hours ago. Google's initial plan, after acquiring the service, was to use Etherpad's tech with its new Wave collaboration platform and to shut down the original service entirely. Soon after the Etherpad code was released, the Swedish Pirate Party launched their instance of the service at piratepad.net. An announcement, which also mentions a new Tor node, is published on the party website (Google translation). The original Etherpad service had in a short time become a killer application for collaborative work within at least the Swedish, and according to my personal experience, in the Finnish Pirate Party as well. The Etherpad open source project is available at Google Code."

Pretty awesome

[NoTheory]

Happy to see a Google acquisition which has not entirely abandoned their existing userbase, as they are assimilated. The company i work for has picked up using etherpads here and there, and was intending on doing so further, until the acquisition. I guess we'll probably give the code base a run, and try installing an internal copy :) Rock on Etherpad & Google guys.

Re:EtherPad makes Google Wave look even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly fear them more than anyone else at this point. That they can comfortably do things like this only shows how big they're getting!

Re:EtherPad makes Google Wave look even worse

[WGFCrafty]

Do you fear accepting gifts from friends due to their extraordinarily elaborate subconscious ploy to undermine and ultimately control you?

Be afraid.

Re:EtherPad makes Google Wave look even worse

[TheCowSaysMooNotBoo]

No, but I do from stores who collect my private data every time I shop there.

Re:EtherPad makes Google Wave look even worse

[Robotech_Master]

I really do think that this was the best thing that could possibly have happened to EtherPad. While it was still closed-source, it was locked up in the hands of one company. There was always the risk it could go away for good. (As very nearly happened right after Google bought them.) It's possible they might even have used the patent they claimed was "pending" to stifle competition if someone created a similar app from scratch.

But now it belongs to all of us, and anyone with the expertise to set it up can run a pad server for his own writing circle or for the world. People might even hack in new features and share them, like that Wave Federation thing Iba mentioned in the blog post.

But even if EtherPad's codebase stays the same forever, it's ours now and we can use it however we want.

Re:EtherPad makes Google Wave look even worse

[maxwell demon]

Then it looks like shopping through the mail with a proxy type address and money orders prepaid with cash is for you!

No, shopping through the mall with cash and without customer card is.

Re:A hint as to buy-out reasoning.

[maxwell demon]

Since this is about editing, I think you mean gnuserv.

Re:Etherpad Wiki?

[emj]

Wikimedia is investigating WYSIWYG editting, and I think their conclusion was that "Yeah it works, but you can't mix it with text edits". There is something special about mediawiki text and Latex, which many current contributors like.

Huh? How is this better than wave... ?

[brunes69]

You realize don't you that Google Wave is both open source AND open protocol?

It is federated like Jabber, anyone who wants to can download the wave source code and run their own wave server. And because it is federated, your server is not a walled garden - you can still join waves hosted on OTHER servers.

Seems far superior to this Etherpad in every sense of the word.

Re:Pretty awesome

[pipatron]

Ok, wait.. So if for example Apple would buy Adobe, they would have to make all their products Open Source? Is that what you're saying?