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."

Comments

For the unititiated...

[julesh]

there's a reasonable explanation of what it is on the home page.

To the submitter, please include a link that explains what you're talking about next time.

Re:For the unititiated...

[Alef]

Another little detail of information, in case anyone reads the links that are included in the summary:

I noticed that Google Translate writes the last couple of sentences of the news release as:
"PiratePad is freely available to all users. The party will save any logs from the service."
What it actually says in Swedish is:
"PiratePad is freely available to all users. The party will not save any logs from the service."

A hint as to buy-out reasoning.

[stimpleton]

Etherpad is httpRequest javascript in a wysiwig which allowes collaborative editing in real time on a text doc with some rich text. My opinion is its a chat window where you type in the area the chat appears.

In a screenshot on their page is the example text "...Etherpads patent-pending sychronization algorithm makes sure everyones edits are merged in realtime".

I would see Gmail's live chat feature being quite close in concept. I wonder if Etherpad extended an open palm and inquired about renumeration.

Re:Wow! This blows me away.

[lattyware]

As far as I am aware, the plan is to make Wave an open protocol, where it can be completely isolated from anything Google by running your own stuff.

Re:Pretty awesome

[atheistmonk]

Yes

Re:EtherPad makes Google Wave look even worse

[awyeah]

Yes - you and I are the product!

Re:Etherpad Wiki?

[maxwell demon]

Of course not every Wiki is MediaWiki, and even if you can't add it to MediaWiki or another existing Wiki, there's no reason why you couldn't create another Wiki based on EtherPad. It won't be used for Wikipedia, of course, but neither is MoinMoinWiki, UseModWiki or any of the other Wikis except MediaWiki.