Google Releases EtherPad as Open Source to Calm Users

From PC World: Google has released the source code of EtherPad, a Web-hosted word processor designed for real-time workgroup collaboration, in a move aimed at appeasing users of the product who complained about plans to discontinue it.

Google acquired EtherPad's creator, AppJet, earlier this month to add AppJet's technology and team to Google Wave, a real-time, hosted collaboration application that combines e-mail, instant messaging and document sharing.

At the time, Google announced that the hosted versions of EtherPad would be shut down at the end of March, triggering an outcry from users.

Google subsequently decided to release EtherPad's code as open source, so that anyone could install it on their own servers. That code is now available for download.

"Our goal with this release is to let the world run their own EtherPad servers so that the functionality can live on even after we shut down etherpad.com," wrote Aaron Iba, former AppJet CEO, on Thursday in an official blog.

In fact, those with entrepreneurial inclinations could even take the EtherPad code and offer the application in a Web-hosted fashion to others, just like AppJet does today, he wrote.

Before the Google acquisition, AppJet offered EtherPad in three versions: a hosted "Free" starter edition; a hosted "Professional" edition priced at US$8 per user per month; and a "Private Network" edition priced at $99 per user and designed to be downloaded to on-premise customer servers.

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