Google Open Sources Wave!

Google open sources two components of Google Wave to allow developers to experiment with the Wave platform.

Internet search giant Google has open sourced two components of its new-age communications platform, Google Wave. Announced in May this year, Google Wave is a Web platform that combines e-mail, instant messaging, social networking and document collaboration.

Now, Google has open sourced two components namely Operational Tranform (OT) code and the underlying wave model, and the client/server application prototype to drive the interest of third-party developers. The company is promoting the developers interest for implementations and hence making it easier for users and businesses to customise applications, says the company.

“The OT code is the heart and soul of the collaborative experience in Google Wave, and we plan that code will evolve into the production-quality reference implementation,” says Google in its blog.

The prototype is intended primarily as a “simple ‘hello, world’ implementation” to encourage experimentation using the Google Wave Federation Protocol.

All of this code — nearly 40,000 lines of Java code — is available under the Apache 2.0 licence. Google has also announced that the protocol specification, white papers and API documentation are being made available under a Creative Commons attribution licence.

Google plans to open source more code as Wave evolves.