Wave Hello, Say Goodbye (to closed-off collaboration platforms)

I'm still reading through what little detail we have on Google Wave, but there certainly appears to be enough for developers to get excited about.

Before we even get to the technical details of what Wave does, or how we develop for it, there's the way it's being designed, developed and distributed. At first glance, everything about Wave is open: Source, protocols, licence, including a patent retaliation clause.

This shows how far we've come towards open source development becoming the norm. Imagine ten years ago, if a company pre-announced a product and made it clear anyone else would be able to use the code, even before the original authors had a chance to build up an established user base — you'd have thought they were mad. Now it just seems normal.

Google's reasons for doing this as open source are no different from what anyone's reasons should be. As Vic Gundotra, Google's VP Engineering said at the launch of Wave, "frankly, we need developers to help us complete this product, and we need your support". Even Google's massive resources aren't enough to make a plan as ambitious as Wave succeed on its own.

By building Wave in an open source manner, Google not only gets additional developer help for free, but also gets a greater range of ideas and opinions than it would from within its own walls. It also reassures the rest of us that this isn't going to be a Google steamroller than flattens any other equivalent services before they start.

Wave won't just be important for what it's capable of, but also for the change in attitudes to software development it represents. Assuming all goes to the plan Google has laid out, everyone wins.