At the Google I/O conference earlier this year, the search giant revealed an intriguing new communication service called Wave that aims to deliver concurrent messaging and collaborative editing in a single cohesive environment. The underlying Wave Federation Protocol is designed to make it possible for third parties to host their own interoperable Wave instances.
Google intends to open the source code of its own implementation in order to encourage widespread adoption of the protocol. The company took its first major steps in that direction on Friday by releasing the source code of its Operational Transform (OT) code and a simple client/server reference implementation that is built on top of the protocol. This code, which is available under the open source Apache Software License, will give developers a way to start experimenting with the protocol and potentially even building their own Wave-compatible services.
