Google puts Wave in a Box

Google Australia has announced plans to "flesh out" its discontinued collaborative platform, Wave, into an open source, privately deployable application bundle.

The announcement came one month after Google ceased stand-alone development of the Australian-built platform, redeploying staff to other projects including Apps, Geo and Net Tools.

In a Google Wave Developer Blog post, software engineer Alex North said the team would expand on its existing 200,000 lines of open source code to build 'Wave in a Box'.

The product would allow developers and "enterprising users" to run wave servers and host waves on their own hardware, North wrote.

Based on a MongoDB database, Wave in a Box would support importing data from Google's existing wave.google.com page - expected to function until the year's end - and feature some of Wave's collaborative functionality.

It targeted those comfortable with setting up and maintaining their own servers, and as an open source project, would be free and publicly available for anyone to use, North said.

By open sourcing Wave code, Google also hoped that others would continue to develop related services and projects, like those at Novell, SAP and instant messaging business ProcessOne.

"From the very beginning of Google Wave, it was always our intention to open source the lion's share of Wave's code so others could use the technology and continue building on the innovation that we started," North told iTnews.

"The beauty of open sourced code is that anyone can use it ... We hope resources like the Wave in a Box project help others take advantage of Wave's communication and collaboration technology."

Google planned to make code contributions to the Wave in a Box project "over the next several months", but declined to disclose when a finished product would be released.