Tokyo F.A.T
On Dec 4 2009, Google bought Appjet inc, the company behind etherpad.com, a site that had actually managed to implement bug-free real-time collaborative writing.
The immediate action from Google was to cancel the service, thus blocking access to ongoing pads, and “integrate” the staff in the Google Wave project. This was nothing short of buying and killing competition.
After heavy protests about the shutdown of etherpad.com from it’s small but dedicated user community, they changed their strategy and released the source code.
The etherpads are not only resilient now, but extra features are being added to pads all over the world. F.A.T.pad is probably the only one featuring motivational teen-rnb from Sweden to get your creative juices flowing.
Please don’t use F.A.T.pad for evil. Go to lolpad for that.
FUCK GOOGLE. Use a FAT PAD
COMMENTS
The expressions published in this site are all in the public domain. You may enjoy, use, modify, snipe about and republish all F.A.T. media and technologies as you see fit.
If it doesn’t work for you. HAVE PATIENCE and try later. #fail
it works!
[…] kam das FATPAD, Google Wave für Freunde der Freiheit. Außerdem gibt’s einen Interview, einen Videopodcast […]
FAT pad’s links failed
and it is so difficult to move away from evil google.
So this is like google docs for us subversive dudes?
no worky
YOUR FAT PAD SUX=RZ BBIG TIME COS THERE IS JUST AN ICON THERE AND NO PAD!!!1
[…] [元記事] […]
OK IT WORKS NOW. FATPAD IS BETTER THAN DOCS! NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED, TRUE REALTIME COLLABORATIVE WRITING, KEWL TIMESLIDER. JUST TYPE IN PAD.FFFFF.AT/YOUROWNPADNAME
I don’t get the outrage here.
Etherpad didn’t HAVE to sell to Google. They CHOSE to. So who’s really to blame?
Also, according to you they released the source code because of the user complaints…so it sounds like Google is willing to listen to their customer base.
What is wrong with ANY of this?
Well, someone offers you shitloads of cash it’s hard to turn down. People have families to feed and things. I wouldn’t have a problem with google buying etherpad if they were interested in the project, but they bought it only to cancel it. The web benefits from being developed in multiple ways, not just the google way (who probably wouldn’t do a service that simple with no login or nothing), so clearly killing competition is evil to the web, yet this is what google tried to do. Google is cool and all but it is still a problem to rely on ONE company being cool and all.
What happened behind the scenes when etherpad decided to release the source is of course not known. Maybe the etherpad crew convinced the wave dudes to talk to sergei, eric or whoever it is you talk to at google to change the plan. Google is so huge now that it can’t be powered by one motto or one logic but contain many and probably conflicting logics. Some are strictly business, some probably believe in the slogan, some might be downright evil. The outcome this time tilted to the good side in the last minute but it’s a sign of emergent logics within google that necessarily have the same interests as what’s best for the internet.
A benevolent dictator can be much better that slow and inefficient democracy, but democracy is a safety net to prevent shit from getting totally messed up.
My guess is that google figured (i.e. nice dudes at google convinced business guys at google) no one would do a serious attempt to continue the project and it was free goodwill. This is why i hope the planned PADCAMP will prove them wrong.
This is my point though. I don’t blame the etherpad guys for selling their product. They needed/wanted the money, and financially benefited from something they created. Woot.
I also don’t blame Google, because it’s smart financially to buy up your competition or (which I feel is more closer to this situation), to buy up a competing product that your bigger competitors could also potentially buy to become a bigger threat. Essentially, buy ether before MS or Apple does.
What I don’t get is this attachment that people have to things they’ve sold. Once you sell something, you relinquish rights to it. You are saying “do what ever the hell you want with this thing”. People still feel like because they once owned it that they are entitled to some say. Guess what…that’s not the case, and it’s not how the real world works.
The truth of it is, if your pissed at ether being sold blame yourself for not financially supporting them in a way that would have kept them from HAVING to sell. You’re either part of the solution, or part of the problem…and here it looks like the user-based wasn’t part of the solution.
“Killing the competition is evil to the web” is a wonderful thing to say…but altruism only goes so far. Every single company in the world has 1 single primary goal. To be profitable. Some may dance around that and put out spin to suggest otherwise…but if your running a business with a goal to be unprofitable you’re an idiot and your inevitable bankruptcy will kill you before your competition will.
So you can’t blame a business for acting in a way that works towards the goal of being profitable. You might as well blame a snake for biting you. It’s in the nature of the thing, and if you’re expecting otherwise you’re not thinking critically and logically.
But then people go on to have the audacity to put them down after they do something which the user base was wanting? What the hell else do you want? Does the CEO of google need to stop by your house and offer you foot rubs for offending you because they had “the nerve” to give someone money for their product and then do as they wanted with it, then release it back into the wilds as people requested?
Yeah, that’s REAL evil.
I think the real evil here is self-entitlement and an immature expectation of the world in which we live.
DUDEZ CHILLZ OUT! ETHERPAD WAS BOUGHT’BY THE GOOGLZ COS WAVE SUX0RZ SO BADLY THEY NEEDED SOME SMART ASS KIDS TELLIN THEM HOW TO MAKE THAT WUN COOL
Much Adieu: I think you are psychologizing too much. Don’t do evil is of course a googlish word for making them look like a person (or a bunch of cool, nerdy dudes) and not a company.
It’s not about being moralistic about google or demanding something from them. Rather about looking from the perspective of a healthy web environment and that gmoney can try to kill that environment, not just fill it with cool free apps. It might be true what you say that M$ or fuckapple could have bought it before. Don’t do evil is only what a company in monopoly far ahead of competition can do with excess resources.
Thing is people still think google have a plan of being profitable just by being nice and releasing user-friendly, free apps when increasingly they find themselves having to act like jerks. Google didn’t create smart and friendly iCapitalism 2.0 but had an amazing headstart that gave them lots of freedom of movement. We just have to find the right way of acting when the google environment becomes less friendly.
drx: I saw bodenständig 2000 in Stockholm 2005 and now I found your pics from our demonstration with Piratbyrån LOL
[…] To do all of this, you maintain countless passwords, chase your friends across an ever-increasing variety of social networks, and constantly move documents and data between your personal computer and various web services. But often there’s no good way to get data from here to there — the sites you use may not accept the data format you have or communicate with the other sites holding your data. Sometimes, the sites you use stop offering the features you need, or are bought by larger companies and shut down to quash competition in a key market. […]
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