Wave isn't dead yet

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Hrmm, been a while since I posted here, I blame Life(tm).

Anyway the last time we spoke, Google had just announced that it was stopping the development of Google Wave primarily because it hadn't achieved the sort of user take up that they had expected. As part of the announcement Google stated that they would start turning off the lights by the end of the year, but in the mean time they would be working out how people would be able to pull their data out of the system and what they could do with the Open Source FedOne project.

Well, while work is still continuing in the background on the tool for pulling your data out of Google Wave, the Open Source portion of the project has been moving ahead in leaps and bounds. The code base has grown as more and more features  are being moved across from the production system and into the FedOne project.

Last week, Google announced their long awaited timetable for the Open Source project. The plan is now to build what they are calling "Wave in a Box":

This project will include:

• an application bundle including a server and web client supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave system
• a fast and fully-featured wave panel in the web client with complete support for threaded conversations
• a persistent wave store and search implementation for the server (building on contributed patches to implement a MongoDB store)
• refinements to the client-server protocols
• gadget, robot and data API support
• support for importing wave data from wave.google.com
• the ability to federate across other Wave in a Box instances, with some additional configuration

To my mind this is an excellent move. The end result will be a basic usable product that people can both install to use and pick apart to create new services and products. This ensures that wave has a second chance at becoming a viable and effective collaboration tool, that may indeed one day, replace email.