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EtherPad Back Online Until Open Sourced
- pibefision 17y agoThanks!
- jcapote 17y agoBravo.
- yan 17y agoThe news of open sourcing of the platform and etherpad has seriously made my day.
- jsomers 17y agoThis is one of those stories I'll tell the next time someone asks me what's so special about the "hacker" community.
- dschobel 17y agoAnd what it says about Google. +5 years into their life as a big public company and they still "get it". I'm thinking of how many desks such a decision would cross at my company (publicly traded, ~1500 people) and it's amazing that Google turned it around in two days.
- jackowayed 17y agoA weekend day, too. At most companies you probably wouldn't even get your no until Monday at best.
- zitterbewegung 17y agoMaybe it has to do with the fact that engineers aren't second class citizens in google? I bet it has all to do with corporate culture.
- vaksel 17y agoif they "got it" they wouldn't have done it in the first place. It's just damage control for them, Sure the fact that they actually try to damage control gives them lots of points, but let's not kid ourselves, without the outrage, nothing would have happened.
- Eliezer 17y agoOther companies would "damage control" by re-enabling new pad creation until their preferred new version came out. Google promises to open-source the code. I call this a win for nonevil. Any sufficiently advanced damage control is indistinguishable from ethics.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoGoogle's "don't be evil" motto is a weak one for several reasons. Negative mottos are inherently weak because they provide a lot of leeway in definition, it's always possible to fuzz the line on what's evil and define evil to be a smaller and smaller zone of behavior. In the strictest terms Google has already committed a fair number of evil acts (e.g. cooperating with Chinese persecution). Also, a double negative (essentially don't be not good) is fundamentally weaker than a positive statement (e.g. "do only good"). More so, over time a statement such as "don't be evil" quickly morphs into "be much less evil than the competition" which then slowly morphs over time into "be just a little bit less evil than the competition". Reading the comments here defending google's actions re: etherpad it's hard to argue that google is at any stage other than the last "be a little less evil than the competition" stage. And at that point your precious "don't be evil" guidance is worthless because at best you are so inconsequentially less evil than the run of the mill heartless corporation that you really haven't decreased the amount of evil being done in the world.
- mquander 17y agoYou know, shutting down creating new documents for two whole days (for free users, not paying ones) has to be pretty low on the evil scale, when the next announcement is that they're going to open-source it. C'mon.
- tel 17y agoBest acquisition ever.
- Sukotto 17y agoGood damage control from Google. It's nice to see a big company that can reverse these sorts of mistakes quickly.
- sachinag 17y agoYou know, I feel a little bad for the Etherpads. They were gonna go off and work on a totally new project as big shots and now they have to spend time supporting a software product that they've already EOL'd.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- eli 17y agoYeah, but up until last week that EOL'd project was the whole company
- jackowayed 17y agoI'd imagine they'll still get some good wave time in. They'll have to spend some time on support and such, but it's not like they'll be working on new features, looking for acquisition, or doing any of that. Also, if support becomes too much of a burden, I could see google having them train 1 or 2 google employees to do a lot of it. These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world. Google just spend "low eight figures" and tried to kill their product immediately. They clearly want them to spend as much time on wave as possible, so they'll find a way to make that happen.
- bumblebird 17y ago>> "These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world." WHAT? Come on. Do you not think other programmers do real-time web things, and have been for years? sigh
- daleharvey 17y agojust because others have been doing it doesnt mean they arent some of the best, etherpad ranks quite a bit above most other real time web stuff.
- bumblebird 17y ago
- Psyonic 17y agoIf they are going to open source most/all of the code, isn't that even a stronger indicator that this was a talent acquisition?
- pavs 17y agoI don't think there was much doubt this was a talent acquisition. Google wave is fully open source too.
- jshen 17y agothe client isn't open source is it?
- cmelbye 17y agoI instantly became incredibly happy when I read the title of this link. I'm so glad that Google and AppJet were actually listening to us and addressed our complaints in just a day.
- pavs 17y agoKudos to Etherpad && Google. Lets just take a moment and acknowledge that fact that if etherpad was taken over by any other company they would never release the source, or feel compelled to continue the service after the acquisition. As much as some of us love to hate Google, you have to agree they deserve some kudos too.
- andreyf 17y agoyou have to agree they deserve some kudos too Assuming Google acquired all of the IP in etherpad, they deserve quite a few kudos :-P
- jurjenh 17y agoI hope it's a trend other companies will be prepared to follow. Value the work methodology - not just the end product. In this case, the initial end product may not be needed by google, as it will most likely require a significant restructure to fit in with Wave, but this shows that they appreciate the original idea to the point where they are prepared to let it stand on it's own merit. The greatest gain to google (as with most of their acquisitions) is the talent. Its a new form of hiring - you get to see the quality and end results of the team, taking much of the guesswork out of the hiring process. So I wish the guys from AppJet all the best, thanks for your work so far, may you go on to do great things from your new positions! And thanks for etherpad too!
- nostrademons 17y agoKind of an odd form of hiring, since 2 of the 3 Etherpad founders used to work at Google and left to form AppJet.
- jodrellblank 17y agoIf you like what an architect can do, and you hire them for a lot of money, you don't automatically get rights to all the buildings they have designed and power to shut the buildings down and kick the tenants out. This sort of thing is one reason why desktop software is still superior - our helpdesk software company sold out and closed down years ago and it didn't affect us, for instance.
- mcantelon 17y agoQuite a contrast between how Google handles developer outrage and how Apple does (or, rather, doesn't).
- cdibona 17y agoThe hardest part is not knee-jerk reacting to the vitriol and trying to get to the root of the complaint. So instead of saying "Some jerk wants us to open source project x" we try (and sometimes it is harder than you think!) to say "Okay, should we open source project X." and go from there. From what I've seen in companies large and small: Outrage works against the outraged, most of the time.
- ct 17y agow00t!
- gfodor 17y agoAwesome -- glad few hours were wasted building Etherpad clones, too :)
- PStamatiou 17y agoThank you. Tonight I was beginning my transition - downloading my pads (zip, thanks!) and moving up to Bespin. Glad I don't have to worry about that now.
- mlinsey 17y agoAll the hullabaloo the past couple days has inspired me to try EtherPad for the first time. Death has long been a great career move for artists, but I never thought it would be that way for web applications.
- jodrellblank 17y agoHas the hullabaloo left you feeling better or worse about Google? I would hate it to start a precedent where every takeover goes: Takeover with intent to open source site, but announce site closure. Lots of fuss and free marketing profile raising. Pretend reversal of intentions and announce site can stay, appear benevolent and wonderful.
- mlinsey 17y agoIt's left me feeling a bit better about Google. My reaction isn't that strong because the route they have chosen obviously makes the most sense for them, especially given that Wave itself is open-source so it's not like they would gain a lot by keeping whatever technology in EtherPad they may adopt secret.
- spicyj 17y agoAlthough Google's behavior has indeed painted a better picture of them in my mind, I would argue that I would have the same impression had they just agreed to open-source it from the beginning.
- gry 17y agoThis afternoon, I installed node.js, started reading papers on operational transformation and sketched ideas based on the Jef Raskin's humane interface. This is great news. And yet, I learned something.
- dpcan 17y agoPossibly a lame theory, but after they shut it down, clone talk was spreading pretty heavily. By open-sourcing, did they just take away the biggest player AND stop the competition in one swoop?
- antirez 17y agoThis is great. Big "stupid" (at least from some specific point of view indeed) companies are well known, when they do a mistake, to take huge time before to realize it. Google is Big, but apparently does not suffer from this problem, so I can only conclude is NOT "stupid".