

I intend to replace Etherpad - bnoland
http://bennoland.com/?p=184

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bprater
Has anyone thought about creating an open-source version of this type of
product?

That would ensure this "problem" happen in the future -- and you gets lots of
brainpower in figuring out how to really improve on the basic theme!

What functionality would you like to see in a great collaborative online
editor?

~~~
antirez
Yep I could like to build a Redis-based project doing this stuff.

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antirez
I guess it's a start but I don't like graphics, the fact it's full screen, the
lack of the chat, when multiple clients are connected I see a strange
"refresh" effect like scrolling on the top then returning, and so forth. Does
not feel like a solid product with a nice UI currently so I think that before
to add more features you should try to improve what you already have.

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atamyrat
OT, Is there any start-up that tried free (as in speech) model for SaaS
product? It will be selling point, because you don't have to worry about
company going out of business or that they decided to move on to something
else.

We need a license that will a) protect the developer from competition as long
as they're in business and b) protect users from the company killing the
product. When devs are not in game anymore, it must be possible for users to
run the software themselves and allow others to enter the market (fork the
company, not just free software). id Software's approach by frequently
releasing old versions of code in Affero GPL might work.

~~~
hbien
I don't know if they qualify as startups, but here are two examples:

Mint (<http://www.haveamint.com>) and FogBugz
(<http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/>)

You can buy and self-host these products, with source code included.

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mpk
Don't broadcast development intentions. That never works well.

~~~
benatkin
I've read <http://sivers.org/zipit> and when I saw this I instantly thought
about it. After that, though, I read the blog, tried out the program, and now
I'm not so sure. It seems like it might be something Ben Noland is ready to
confidently pursue. Also, I would say that it usually doesn't work well, not
that it never works well. I'm not big on absolutes when it comes to things
like creativity, business, and motivation.

One thing that makes zipit not apply is that it's already partly a reality in
two different ways. First, he has a pretty good prototype, with good branding
already. Second, his call to action has actually started some serious
interest, from what I can tell. There are quite a few encouraging comments and
suggestions here and on his blog, for something that was just announced half a
day ago.

Ben, I hope you can bring collabedit to fruition!

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slackerIII
Wouldn't it be funny if this was exactly what google intended when they shut
it down? Surely it helps Wave and future products if a bunch of engineers
start building expertise with this type of tech.

~~~
bumblebird
You can (as we see) knock up a bare bones copy reasonably easily. The
expertise is already out there. I'd say quite a lot of people are working on
realtime collaborative comet stuff, and have been for quite a while now.

The hard bit is getting people to use it.

I wrote a fun multiplayer drawing applet (Java) back in 2000, but no one used
it :( _sob_. Actually a few did, it was fun anyway :) One of my points is,
this technology is nothing new.

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eam
It sounded like a great idea until...
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979055>

~~~
benatkin
Fortunately, he's a fan of etherpad, so if the open source product is good
(might not be-sometimes open sourcing something doesn't work well), he'll be
ready to commercialize it. People will still need support and hosting.

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dpcan
You are not alone. I spent hours last night working on my own that's been
abandoned for a long time. You are a little ahead of the game right now, and
it looks nice!

With the leader out of the way for a while, I can't help but wonder how many
of these will pop-up, and how many geeks did the same thing last night :)

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FreeRadical
Can you please put a video of your product in action (being used by multiple
users) on your site please?

~~~
bnoland
Probably not today, but you try it out:
<http://collabedit.com/display?id=44959>

You can also open multiple browser windows if no one else is there.

~~~
tudorachim
This is pretty sweet; it seems like a nicer way to do one-off pastebins than
current sites.

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furtivefelon
a forever qualm about online code editor i have is that they don't do
automatic indenting properly. I have never used etherpad, i'm not sure how
well they did this, but textmate is a good example to model after :D

~~~
yesimahuman
I agree wholeheartedly. The first thing I noticed with Bespin specifically
that STILL hasn't been fixed as far as I can tell from using it for the last
few minutes was the lack of auto indentation. It is such an important thing
for a code editor. It HAS to be there.

EDIT: I see they added the autoindent setting last March. I still can't for
the life of me figure out how to actually enable it. It should be on by
default, no question about it.

