Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Free alternatives to Google Wave?

Do you know some free alternatives to Google Wave to collaborate with other people on discussions/projects. They should provide at minimum the following features:

  • Create private discussions
  • Invite people to discussions
  • Possibility to edit other users posts
  • Simple text formatting (bold, italic, colored font)
  • Notifications
  • Track changes since last visit

Additional nice and welcome features are:

  • Insert polls
  • Share documents (editing capabilities would be great)
  • Share images
  • Share attachments

UPDATE BOUNTY: Now that Google has announced to abandon Google Wave project, I really need an alternative.

UPDATE FREE: Free means that spend money on hosting a script/software is not a solution for me.

UPDATE REQS: I removed sharing of images/attachments/documents from minimum requirements.

  • Yep, Google wave is free and is now available for everyone! (In the US)

    But just to give you an alternative, you could try Open Wonderland. Its different than Google Wave, but supports your minimum feature set.

    Open Wonderland is a 100% Java open source toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio, share live desktop applications, and collaborate in an education, business, or government context. Wonderland is completely extensible; developers and graphic artists can extend its functionality to create entirely new worlds and add new features to existing worlds.

    neo : And I thought Second Life is gone...
  • I'm guessing the only reason you can't use the public and free Google Wave is because you need some sort of behind the firewall, on premise hosting solution.

    If you need Google Wave like functionality inside a firewall or for some other reason can't use the public server, you can run the prototype implementation of the FedOne server. It doesn't have a slick web interface (or any web interface at all last time I checked) but it gives you the functionality if you need it on your own network, you'll just need to create your own interfaces as you need them, but it is free.

    Novell is creating Pulse to bring Wave into the enterprise, which will be available for on premise deployment, but of course won't be free.

    From danivovich
  • You can use Google docs for that.

    The discussion part wouldn't be as we are use to, but you can create a document and share ideas over there.

    Casebash : Google docs even has wave's instant editing now
    Oscar Reyes : @Casebash: Yeap, you can see how is typing what instantaneously.
  • I'm not sure how good this is, but I guess it comes pretty close: Pligus

    From thunderror
  • Google Wave's source code is open so you could install it on a server and use it for yourself.


    If you are willing to use a combination of products, here's what's available for you (there are other options, but these will do):

    • TypeWith.me for dicsussions/text document editing (as suggested by 3rdparty) or Campfire if editing other people's post is not mandatory
    • Dropbox for sharing any other types of documents (images, binaries, etc.), you can even track modifications with their web app

    If you truly want to track modifications on documents, bitbucket (1 free private repository) or GitHub (free if everything is public) work well and both provide a good web UI. The downside is that you and your collaborators need to learn to use Mercurial or Git (depending on which one you use).

    Zoredache : Except that is only the server and protocol. It doesn't seem to include the webapp part.
    GoodEnough : Indeed, it seems they never open-sourced the client-server code, only the "messaging service".
    From GoodEnough
  • I haven't found suitable alternatives to Wave yet, but these are two solutions that have open-source community editions and could be expanded upon:

    Teambox

    Alfresco

    I am hoping they open the source on the Google Wave webapp, and that we see Wave live on through individually hosted servers.

    From tcp
  • A service you might want to check out is drop.io. They say it's "Simple real-time sharing, collaboration, and more.". Not quite the same as Google Wave, but similar. They also have an API, so you could probably make something like very similar to Google Wave. I think what they have already is most of what you are looking for.

  • You can try Glasscubes which is free.

    marco.ragogna : Free but only for 2 users and 2 workspaces. Too less
    From MichealH
  • Have you tried Zenbe Shareflow(http://www.zenbe.com/shareflow)

    They provide 1GB free storage.

  • As the founder of pligus, I would agree with thunderror and invite everyone here to try it: http://pligus.com

    The main differences and improvements is that you share your screen and draw or comment an image together. Also, pligus has videoconference, which makes the communication part much better :)

    I am open for questions and feedbacks. You all can talk to me right here or at gustavo@pligus.com

  • What about hosting your own EtherPad install?

    If that's scary, try:

    marco.ragogna : EtherPad installation would require an hosting that I don't have. Sync.in is free only for public discussions. Typewith.me seems to allow only public discussion too, or I was not able to find how to create a private one.
    From 3rdparty
  • PyGoWave is one of the most promising free clones right now. Emphasis on "promising"; the functionality offered is currently pretty basic. It looks like it's easier to set up than Google's Wave offerings, though.

    Alternatively, if you want something that works now and you mostly used Google Wave as a persistent online chatroom, Anologue is great. It doesn't have an inbox, contact list, allow editing of existing posts, or support threading. But it works really, really well as as substitute for chatting on Wave. It's open source too, so you can add an inbox and hook into Google contacts if you have the skillz.

    From James
  • Check out Flowdock. It should be able to match your requirements.

    From dmni

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