Google Boxes up Wave, Survival via Federation

When Google announced that Wave would be shut down at the end of the year, I was extrememly disappointed since I believed in the movement of communication beyond email and all the other modes of collaboration.  For me, the saving grace was the announcement that Google would be working hard to build upon their open source FedOne project to incorporate all the the web UI that Google's own Wave had to date.  This new project is aptly named "Wave in a Box".

Back about a year ago, I went through the rigors of getting a FedOne Wave server installed.  Although the Wave Protocol had been released at Google I/O in May 2009, there was not much excitement without being able to federate with the development sandbox.  The other issue was nobody had access till the preview lauched, except in the sandbox, and all the invite hell that followed.

Once Google opened up federation on wavesandbox.com many of us started trying to run our own servers so we could test out this cool new federation protocol.  Most of the setup was pretty easy but certificates, which are required for federation with Google's Wave Sandbox, can be quite the ordeal to get working properly.  Without completely re-outlining every step, I thought I would outline my setup since I recently moved my wave setup to another server and had to walk thought the steps again, refreshing my memory.

Server OS: Ubuntu 10.10 Server:

1 - Get necessary packages to setup the Wave-in-a-box environment:

$: sudo apt-get install mercurial ant default-jdk mongodb eclipse 

NOTE: With Ubuntu 10.10 you need to get the repository for Java first:

 $: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sun-java-community-team/sun-java6

 $: sudo apt-get update

 

2 - Get current Wave-in-a-Box source:

$: mkdir wave-development

$: cd wave-development

$: hg clone https://wave-protocol.googlecode.com/hg/ wave-protocol

 

3 - Build Wave-in-a-Box:

$: cd wave-protocol

$: sudo ant

Building Wave-in-a-Box is pretty straight forward however there are a few things to know if you intend to federate with other Wave-in-a-Box instances, especially when authentication is used.  Two major components, not mentioned above, are required to establish secure signing between servers and to allow some of the live collaboration. You will need to install an XMPP server and have your certificates built for the domain you are going to use for federation.  I also needed to add a few things to my host file and setup SRV records on my domain registrar to get all to work correctly.

Below are some links to help you in getting all of Wave-in--Box setup and working:

Setup: http://www.waveprotocol.org/wave-in-a-box/setting-up

Building: http://www.waveprotocol.org/wave-in-a-box/building-wave-in-a-box

Installation: http://www.waveprotocol.org/code/installation

XMPP step by step (Openfire): http://www.waveprotocol.org/federation/openfire-installation

Federation Certificates: http://www.waveprotocol.org/federation/certificates

Certificate Issuer: http://www.startssl.com/

A great step by step by Ralf Rottman: http://www.24100.net/2009/11/federate-google-wave-sandbox-with-your-own-fedone-server/

Once you are setup you can start trying out your newly, self-hosted Wave server. WiaB comes with two client interfaces.  The first is a terminal client located in the "wave-protocol" directory which can be used by typing:

./run-console-client.sh <username>  

Once inside you can type "/help" to see the available commands.

The other interface is web-based and works rather well.  This is the area that is under major development to bring it to parity with Google Wave's web UI.  By default it is accessible on port 9898 so you can access it by visiting http:/yourdomain.com:9898.  

Currently Federation is only open on other WiaB instances in which it is enabled and the developers sandbox at http://wavesandbox.com.  If you just want to try to set WiaB without federation, certificates and XMPP servers are not necessary.  You can then setup the server and install and build the source and run the server.  There is currently a config file for no federation that will allow you to test out the web UI quickly with very little headache.  Federation is key to the success of this platform in the long run so if you are serious about sustaining a Wave server, get federation running too! ~Lou

A Few Images:

If you have questions or run into any issues, please leave a comment or send me a message:

Twitter: @gol10dr

Wave: gol10dr@googlewave.com

Google Wave WILL LiveOn!

When Google Wave was first revealed at Google I/O 2009, I was anxious to get my ticket into this great new landscape of communication and collaboration. As the preview was rolled out, all us techies were inviting our techie friends so we could test out all the cool things that could be done with the new platform.
For me, the promise was more than just a new way to communicate, it was a look at simplification of my communication. Centralized communication that could be chat, collaboration, email, social interactions and project management, just to name a few. The reason something as old as email works today is that all email is federated. You don't have to be on GMail to get email from someone on GMail. For those of us that remember, this was not always the case. For me, this is the problem with the Internet today. Twitter, Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn, they all require an account to participate. StatusNet is a great example of how federated systems could work for a service like Twitter. Belong to one service and subscribe remotely to users on another network without having to join every network as well.

Back last December 2009, Google opened up federation between Google's Developer's sandbox (wavesandbox.com) which meant anyone could build a Wave server that could federate with the sandbox with an open source project known as FedOne.
After buying a yet another domain, installing an XMPP server (OpenFire, an open source instant messaging server of which brings the dynamic nature of Wave), registering SSL certificates and building the source, I was able to successfully federate with the sandbox as well. (web interface is the Wave Sandbox and the terminal is my Fed One instance)

After Google I/O 2010, FedOne was updated to have a "FedOne Simple Web Client" in addition to the terminal client which again gave the taste of possibility.

I was beside myself when the news came out the Google was going to stop developing Wave as a standalone product: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html
There are about 1M users on Wave and many are disappointed that the development will cease and will only continue running till the end of 2010. There is even a site that has about 20,000 people try to save Wave at http://savegooglewave.com.
The only comfort is that Wave's protocol is open and can be downloaded and built upon at http://waveprotocol.com. I am hoping Google will open source the web interface so more federated services will pop up. There are a number of companies that are using some of these technologies to build collaboration options into their own offerings. As Google has said, Wave taught them a lot and Docs' recent addition of live typing and Google Buzz's threaded comments are signs of adopted technologies. I would love to see the product live on but I will wait to see the fruits of Wave's labor in future products to come. ~Lou