Google Wave goes open sauce

WAVE IN A BOX is Google's new name for a reduced open source version of its communications suite that includes email and instant messaging.

The company has open sourced around 200,000 lines of code in a package that includes an application bundle with a server and web client, support for threaded conversations and the ability to import existing Wave data.

"This project will not have the full functionality of Google Wave as you know it today," said software engineer Alex North on the Google Wave team blog.

"However, we intend to give developers and enterprising users an opportunity to run wave servers and host waves on their own hardware. We hope this project will help the Wave developer community continue to grow and evolve."

Google pulled the original Wave suite, which used a combination of email, instant messaging, wikis, and blogging capabilities to build a communications suite. The company cited lack of user interest in the software as the reason to shut it down, but as an open source project the code could get a new lease on life. µ