EtherPad Open Source Release

[atamyrat]

They also released internal development notes, goals, TODO list, design decisions etc. Check out *.txt files.

http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/infras... http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/infras...

Thanks for sharing them!

[friism]

Yeah, and I really hope the paypal password in billing.js is not the real one: http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/etherp...

[staunch]

Thanks to The Google & The Etherpads!

I fully expect to see 30 different sites offering this now, and HN to be full of links to them tomorrow.

[flog]

For those of us who have been working on side-project competitors for a few months this is a worrying prediction, and quite probably correct.

Can HN name any niches that they feel should be filled with a similar product?

[aditya]

Not completely related but, super interesting that etherpad actually started as appjet.

via crunchbase: AppJet intends to simplify the process of writing web applications. The applications are programmed on a web based text editor in the simple but powerful JavaScript programming language. JavaScript is used on both the server and client side.

I guess they ended up realizing that the code editor was a better product/market to go after than the app creation/hosting itself.

Also, interesting that pg invested in the angel round as well, post-YC.

More: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/appjet

[jsomers]

Man, I can't wait to build this locally. In its raw form I expect it to work great for essay writing, etc., but I can imagine all kinds of cool modifications, like allowing cross-pad hyperlinks. Let the hacking begin!

Edit: I realize that a local build makes very poor use of etherpad's killer feature--its super-fast realtime collaboration--but the biggest draw for me was actually their "playback" mode.

[paraschopra]

Yes, a cool feature would be to let multiple etherpads talk to each other. Sort of like Google wave :)

Also imagine HN (or any other forum) working on some sort of similar platform. Threaded chats I would say.

[tdmackey]

I got it running on a vps and it works great. The documentation made it trivial to do so.

[anotherjesse]

I want it so I code do:

    % etherclient foo.txt
    etherclient accepting from http://example.com/as213

Then I can share the url with co-workers. The pad is initialized with the contents of foo.txt and then updates are sent.

Then make it be more project based. Then integrate revision control.

Perhaps I should sleep instead of reading code.

[ique]

I have my last final today. This comes as a perfect school-is-over-and-i-can-start-hacking-again gift! I'm hoping to be able to integrate LaTeX export into this so I can collaborate on LaTeX reports without having to download and build manually.

[grinich]

I had the same thought.

Let me know if you want to collaborate. <[email protected]>

[dreeves]

I hacked up something for LaTeX collaboration: http://etherpad.com/latexmk

[artaak]

I would be happy to test it - pls let me know.

[iandanforth]

http://netherpad.com

Sponsored by PBworks!

Or if it's easier for you to remember:

http://etherpad.pbworks.com

[myprasanna]

Alternatively you can use: http://ietherpad.com/ Thanks.

[jbyers]

Both now redirect to pbworks.com.

[joshwa]

Yay! Now we can do remote pair-programming totally within our internal network (the IT Policy goons are quite unhappy when it comes to using cloud-based services).

[bretthoerner]

Pair programming in EtherPad? Yikes. I really like EtherPad, but I don't code in Notepad, either.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Rudel

[palish]

remote pair-programming

Doesn't that defeat the supposed purpose of pair-programming?

[hello_moto]

Eclipse 3.5 has this feature.

[houseabsolute]

Huh, looks like the whole thing, client and server, are written in Javascript. I think I would be fine with that. Beats writing it in C++ that's for sure.

[dimarco]

There is a ton of Scala in there.

[10ren]

Does this mean it definitely was talent (including know-how etc) rather than technology or market acquisition?

[jsankey]

Not necessarily: maybe Google also wants to use some of the acquired technology, which they now can in its open source form. They're just not stopping anyone else from using it.

[colinplamondon]

Awesome! You guys handled this incredibly well, and open sourcing with an Apache license is super classy. Can't wait to see what comes of this, and starting up our own internal instance. Thank you!

[grinich]

Wow, that was fast.

Huge thanks to both the Appjet team and Google for doing this.

[defen]

Anyone feel like digging into the code and doing a writeup about the "secret sauce" - how they managed to make the real time stuff so responsive?

[alnayyir]

non-blocking Event I/O, server-side + client-side JS.

Cf. node.js for infrastructural style (but with Scala in Etherpad's case)

[simonw]

    $ sh bin/rebuildjar.sh 
    using JAR jar...
    usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file     target_file
           cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file ...     target_directory
    including etherpad JARs...
    using cached JAR-etherpad...
    updating...
    java.io.FileNotFoundException: ../../build/appjet.jar (No such file  or directory)
	at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
	at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:106)
	at sun.tools.jar.Main.run(Main.java:175)
	at sun.tools.jar.Main.main(Main.java:1044)
    done.
    cp: build/appjet.jar: No such file or directory

Anyone got any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[mark_l_watson]

The directions say to set export MYSQL_CONNECTOR_JAR= to location of a mysql client jar -- you see this error message if you don't do this.

[aaroniba]

Looks like the cp failed. What operating system is this on?

[d_c]

I'm having the exact same problem on OS X 10.6

[mark_l_watson]

Awesome, following the directions, it took just a few minutes to get a local copy running. I used to run my own online word processor, written about 6 years ago for my own use, but a few thousand people signed up to try it. It is tempting to run an EtherPad instance for my business clients, and another one for my friends and family. That said, eventually I think that Wave will be awesome so sticking to that makes the most sense. Investing a lot of time to get into the EtherPad codebase seems like a slippery slope to non-productivity.

[kroo]

Hopefully this will lead to strong community around real-time eventual-consistency text synchronization. Here a link to etherpad's implementation of their magic algorithm: http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/source/browse/trunk/etherp... -- though it's pretty tightly integrated with their editor component, "ACE".

[anotherjesse]

I've wanted to add a feature like this into userscripts.org for a long time!

stop! compile time

[ga]

Coming to the competition : http://uxoo.com Now what? A feature race? Back to the problem of monetizing a website based on free software, where there is little to no entry bar.

[jbyers]

...and it's offline. Whole repo now 404s.

[edit] Appears Aaron is re-importing the tree as I type. Paths have all changed to be under trunk/trunk...

[edit2] Back to normal paths. Not clear what has changed.