Google programmers open source two components of the Google Wave messaging and collaboration prototype. One includes the Operational Transform, which forms the complex center of the Wave model. Google Wave is an example of the Pushbutton Web, where real-time communications rule the roost.Google
programmers continue to advance the Google Wave prototype application, which strives to put e-mail, instant messaging communication and
file-sharing collaboration functionality in one palette.
Google July 24
said it released to open source the OT (Operational Transform) code, the framework that enables multiple people to edit a
single document in real time across a wide-area network, as well as a basic
client/server prototype that uses the wave protocol.
Google Wave
programmers issued the code under an Apache 2.0 license during an event hosted
for 150 developers who desired a deeper dive into the software and possibly
even to pony up code for the Google Wave Federation Protocol.
The Google Wave
Federation Protocol is an open extension to the XMPP core protocol, geared to
allow near real-time communication of wave updates between two wave servers.
Google Wave
programmers said the OT code comprises the "heart and soul" of
collaboration functionality in Google Wave, and is intended to encourage
experimentation using the Google Wave Federation Protocol. The release included
roughly 40,000 lines of Java code, which Google expects to evolve into the
reference implementation.
"While
these are still early days for the federation protocol and open source project,
our vision for Wave recognizes the importance of encouraging and promoting
third-party implementations, so users and businesses are able to customize and
manage everything from the ground up (features, data, etc.)," wrote Jochen
Bekmann and Sam Thorogood, software engineers for Google Wave, in a blog post.
The programmers
said the Operational Transformation algorithm for Wave is ahead of the
algorithm implemented in Google's servers in production. Accordingly, the Google
Wave team is working to bring the new Operational Transform code up to speed in
the company's own production systems. Google is also opening up the federation
port on WaveSandbox.com.
Major companies
continue to leverage the open-source XMPP messaging technology. Cisco acquired
the Jabber, whose instant messaging client is based on XMPP, in the hopes of
adding real-time instant messaging and even Twitter-like status updates to its
WebEx Connect collaboration suite.
XMPP is also
considered by Anil Dash, vice president for blogging software company Six
Apart, to be one of the precursor technologies to what he calls the Pushbutton
Web.
The Pushbutton Web is basically a technological direction Dash
characterizes as any site or application that "can deliver real-time
messages to a Web-scale audience, using free and open technologies at low cost
and without relying on any single company like Twitter or Facebook."
Google Wave, of
course, specializes in delivering real-time instant messages using open-source
technologies, so it falls into Dash's Pushbutton Web. Indeed, Daniel D. Shaw
responded to Dash's blog post with the connection: "Actually, I think the
Google Wave protocol will go a long way toward enabling these types of
interactions."
Federation Day
and the open-sourced Wave code come one day after the Google Wave API Hackathon, after which
some 6,000 developers were able to test the application. Several testers wrote favorably about the software in their blogs, but noted the
app was still quite rough.
Google plans to
open Google Wave to 100,000 nondeveloper users Sept. 30, so the company is doing a
lot of work to fortify the application for the general public.
Linux & Open Source 
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