EtherPad

As promised, we hereby release all the source code to EtherPad.

http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/

Our goal with this release is to let the world run their own etherpad servers so that the functionality can live on even after we shut down etherpad.com.

If you are just interested in running an etherpad server, these instructions should get you up and running.

If you are interested in digging into the code and improving etherpad, then we will try to support you in our spare time until we begin working full-time on Google Wave in February.

In other news, you may have noticed that etherpad.com has had a lot of downtime lately. That is because of new server load issues caused by the higher traffic following our announced acquisition by Google. We are doing our best to keep the site up and running, but it's clear that we will not be able to do so indefinitely. Our plan remains to discontinue the hosted service completely by March 31st, 2010. New public pad creation may need to be shut down sooner, depending on whether traffic continues to grow or taper off. As usual, you can export your pad data through the "import/export" tab on the pad page or the "download" link at the bottom of the pad list on pro domains.

Although etherpad.com will be shutting down, our hope is that others will find a way to host improved etherpad servers themselves based on the source code. For those ambitious hackers out there, perhaps it would even be possible to get etherpad servers to talk to one another, as well as Google Wave servers, via the Google Wave Federation Protocol.