FedOne is dead, long live Wave in a box!

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 When Google announced it was going to stop providing its own Wave service by the end of the year, it made two commitments.

Firstly, it was going to ensure that Google Wave users were going to be able to export their data so that  when the service was shut down, they weren't disadvantaged.

Secondly, the Google wave team maintained that they were going to keep working on the Open Source components of the project (including the protocols) right up until the switch is flicked on the main Google Wave service.

Well on both counts things are looking up.

As you may recall, Wave in a box is the expanded Open Source reference project. Built on the bones of the FedOne project (itself created as a reference implementation of the federation protocol), the idea is to create a Wave server that someone can take away and start using with as little effort as possible.

Essentially Wave in a box aims to be the Postfix of Wave servers.

Anyhoo on the 16th of September the first "Office Hours" event for Wiab was held to answer questions and establish a base level of understanding amongst those of us with a real interest in Wave. It was well attended by the Google Wave team and we got a lot of questions answered.

To summarise:

• Federation on  the wavesandbox appears to be borked. Anthony Baxter and co are working on the problem.
• The Data export tool will export waves in a number of different formats, including the ability to export to a format supported by the new Wiab project.
• Waib 1.0 will have the following:
  • Client Authentication: Internal system plus pluggable system (definitely internal, pluggable a really, really want to have)
  • Wave storage: One of the major drawbacks to FedOne is the lack of persistance. Wave in a box will fix that by launching with mongodb support. There could also be a db layer that would allow for other data storage systems to be used.
  • Robots and Gadgets: Yes, the plan is for Wiab to support Robots and Gadgets in a similar manner to the Google Wave API's. If there are going to be any differences they will be well telegraphed.
  • Administration: Another thing missing from FedOne, Wiab will have at least a simple web based administration panel. 
• The guys and gals at Google are really interested in getting non-google people involved in the Wave project. They recognise that for wave to survive and grow in the long term, it's the outsiders who are going to help the most.
• As part of the simplification process, there will be installable packages for the main Operating Systems (Linux, Windows and OSX).

Well that's the main stuff I went away from the office hours with. For the full discussion go and read through the wave.

Things are getting interesting, in such a good way.