No, Etherpad was completely closed from the start. The team convinced Google to open-source it a few days after acquisition.
Guys, this whole thread seems kind of... dunno, immature? Tweetie (in all of its flavors) are the IP of Atebits (and now Twitter, Inc). Demanding that it be open-sourced 5 seconds after acquisition looks whiny. Just because it is a current trend doesn't mean it has to be followed, and it certainly is not the case in 99% of software acquisitions. Twitter has contributed to, or created, many open-source projects: http://twitter.com/about/opensource Just chill and let them figure out what to do with it. Here's a tip... people tend to do things when they think it was their idea first... Mandates and petitions feel like an angry mob with pitchforks. -Chad On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 11:44 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <[email protected]> wrote: > On 04/10/2010 06:29 AM, Lakshman Prasad wrote: >> Facebook acquired Friendfeed and open sourced it. >> >> Google acquired Etherpad and open sourced it. > > IIRC Etherpad *was* open source from the start. Google bought the > company and put its developers to work on Wave, a pale "competitor" of > Etherpad. Etherpad development was "discontinued", I think. In any > event, it was a strategic business move. > >> >> I'm wondering, if, on the same lines, twitter will open source Tweetie for >> Mac, and iPhone and the impending Tweetie for iPad. > > They might, but releasing a previously closed-source application as open > source requires *significant* effort, both technical and legal. It took > Sun a long time to do it with Java - I'm not even sure it was fully > complete when Oracle bought them. Tweetie's not as big as Java and > Atebits is not as big as Sun, but even so, there are *costs* and it > wouldn't necessarily add revenue, especially since the iPhone version is > now free. > > Of course, it's a lot harder to turn an open source project into a > closed one. ;-) > > -- > M. Edward (Ed) Borasky > http://borasky-research.net/about-smartznmeb/ > > "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." ~ Paul Erdős >
