
EtherPad Back Online Until Open Sourced - aaroniba
http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/etherpad-back-online-until-open-sourced
======
jsomers
This is one of those stories I'll tell the next time someone asks me what's so
special about the "hacker" community.

~~~
dschobel
And 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.

~~~
vaksel
if 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
Other 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
Google'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.

~~~
nl
You've got an odd definition of evil.

Exactly which part is evil? 1) Buying AppJet 2) Publicly announcing their
intentions for the service 3) Listing to feedback 4) Changing their intentions
for the service (on a weekend)

This is a serious question, btw. Obviously shutting down a service isn't evil
on it's own - it's a net good for the world if no one care about it (saving
electricity, giving people more fulfilling work etc).

Perhaps your argument is that they should have responded quicker. If that's
the case then would it be possible for you to lay out your proposal for
quicker responses?

~~~
jodrellblank
2.5) That their intentions are "now or soon you must stop using this service
which you like, and instead you can use our unfinished, very different service
or you can fuck off".

We call it 'evil' (to some degree) when a big supermarket starts up on the
edge of town, shuts down the small independent shops and offers you the choice
of supermarket-butcher and supermarket-baker or nothing, don't we?

We call it 'evil' (to some degree) when governments or industry forcibly buy
up houses and turf people out to build a railway or reservoir, and offer
people the choice of whatever-the-government-wants-to-pay or nothing, yes?

Yes Google have turned it around very quickly, but in the context of the
parent post "we like EtherPad let's use our massive amounts of cash to hire
their developers and incidentally ruin their product but who cares" is not on
the same level of goodness as "we like EtherPad let's use our massive amounts
of cash to train our developers and make our product so good that people move
over by choice".

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pavs
Kudos 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
_you 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
I 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
Kind of an odd form of hiring, since 2 of the 3 Etherpad founders used to work
at Google and left to form AppJet.

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mlinsey
All 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
Has 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
It'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.

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Psyonic
If 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
I don't think there was much doubt this was a talent acquisition. Google wave
is fully open source too.

~~~
jshen
the client isn't open source is it?

~~~
cdibona
If you mean Wave, there is some code open sourced (syncronizer), and we're
working on getting the rest out. Also, we have federation testing. You should
join the dev list if you want to try it out. There are some neat non-google
implemented wave servers based on the protocol docs we released earlier this
year.

~~~
jshen
not the servers, the code that produces the web app I see at wave.google.com

~~~
cdibona
Actually, we intend to opensource the UI as well. So server + federation +
syncronization + client ui.

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yan
The news of open sourcing of the platform and etherpad has seriously made my
day.

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cmelbye
I 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.

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mcantelon
Quite a contrast between how Google handles developer outrage and how Apple
does (or, rather, doesn't).

~~~
cdibona
The 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.

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dpcan
Possibly 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?

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Sukotto
Good damage control from Google. It's nice to see a big company that can
reverse these sorts of mistakes quickly.

~~~
ashu
You've gotta be kidding me. Damage control? They had absolutely no need to
take this step; the fact that they did is just a nice thing.

~~~
prakash
It's all relative isn't it :-)

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gfodor
Awesome -- glad few hours were wasted building Etherpad clones, too :)

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gry
This 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.

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pibefision
Thanks!

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sachinag
You 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.

~~~
jackowayed
I'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
>> "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_

~~~
jackowayed
Would Google have paid low eight figures in a talent acquisition if they
weren't?

In particular, they probably are _the_ best people to join the Wave team
because not only have they been doing real-time, they've been doing a real-
time app that is very similar to wave, since they're both essentially
documents (though wave is a little more like a series of sometimes-nested
documents, but it's all the basically the same).

~~~
bumblebird
I have no idea. My point though is:

    
    
      1. "Real-time" is nothing new
      2. There are people who have been working in 'real time' web apps for years

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antirez
This 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".

------
tel
Best acquisition ever.

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PStamatiou
Thank 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.

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jcapote
Bravo.

------
ct
w00t!

