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AppJet Retreats on Closure Plans, Will Open Source EtherPad Instead

The Google-acquired company back-tracked on its initial plans after its users were very vocal in their disapproval

Dec 7, 2009 10:30 GMT  ·  By
The Google-acquired company back-tracked on its initial plans after its users were very vocal in their disapproval
   The Google-acquired company back-tracked on its initial plans after its users were very vocal in their disapproval

Late last week, AppJet announced that it had been acquired by Google and that it would be effectively shutting down EtherPad, its real-time document collaboration app. This last part didn't sit particularly well with its users which were vocal in their disapproval of the move, claiming that in no way Google Wave, to which they were encouraged to switch, is a substitute for the app they've grown to love. AppJet has heard their complaints and has now completely scratched its initial plans and will continue to support the service at least until it will completely open-source it, which it also intents to do.

“Many of you were not super thrilled with the transition plan we announced in our last blog post, which I guess is really quite flattering. We have worked with Google and the Google Wave team to make the following changes to the plan, which I think you will appreciate,” Aaron Iba, AppJet CEO wrote.

“We have re-enabled pad creation from the EtherPad home page. We have begun planning how to open source the code to EtherPad and the underlying AppJet Web Framework... We are working with the Google Wave team to get all EtherPad users a chance to try out the Google Wave preview within the next couple of weeks.”

The initial plan was to disable the creation of new “pads,” what the company calls its collaborative document sessions, and then shut down the service entirely. No new users would be able to sign up and existing ones had to retrieve their documents by March 31 2010. The AppJet team would move on to work on Google Wave and it encouraged EtherPad users to switch to it as well.

Now, AppJet is saying users can continue to use EtherPad just like they used to for the foreseeable future. The company wants to open-source the project but will support it until this happens and possibly until it believes its users are catered to elsewhere. Of course, the team would still rather have people use to Google Wave which they acknowledge as being an inferior alternative for the being, but which they believe will eventually grow to replace EtherPad.