Google Wave Open source

Google plans to release most of the source code as open source,allowing the public to develop its features through extensions. Google will also allow third-parties to build their own Wave services as quickly as possible (be it private or commercial) because it wants the Wave protocol to replace the e-mail protocol. Initially, Google will be the only Wave service provider, but it is hoped that, as the protocol becomes standardized and the prototype server becomes stable, other service providers will launch their own Wave services, possibly designing their own unique web-based clients as is common with many email service providers. The possibility also exists for native Wave clients to be made, as demonstrated by Google with their CLI-based console client.

Google has made an initial open-source release of some components of Wave:

1. the operational transform (OT) code,
2. the underlying wave model, and
3. a basic client/server prototype that uses the wave protocol

In addition, Google has provided some detail about the next phases of the open-source release:

1. wave model code that is a simplified version of Google's production code and is tied to the OT code; this code will evolve into the shared code base that Google will use and expects that others will too
2. a testing and verification suite for people who want to do their own implementation (for example, for porting the code to other languages)