I expressed myself more fully in a blog post: http://www.titaniainc.com/wave/what-was-google-wave-what-could-wave-become/
I think what we are witnessing is a disjuncture between the developers working for Google, many who have been making an incredible effort to push things forward and foster the community, and Google's clueless upper management, which can't even seem to remember that it promised the developer community anything a year ago and wants to use all of the cool features of wave primarily to improve existing products. That said, I think they are sensitive to the fact that there is an active community which is precisely why they letting the media handle things and avoiding the harder questions about their fulfillment of previous commitments. My guess is that they simply hope to turn off the site as soon as possible and hope that the media attention fizzles and moves on to the next greatest thing (e.g. Farmville II). On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 7:45 PM, Brian May <[email protected]>wrote: > On 5 August 2010 08:28, Joel Dietz <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/04/wave-goodbye-to-google-wave/ > > > > Kind of strange to actively encourage development by independent > developers > > and promise future code releases while privately planning to kill the > > project... > > It kind of irritates me the way Google went about this. They started a > community effort to create something new and unique. They got this > community effort, and things seemed to be happening. When we could > start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, they decided to > cancel the project. Instead of officially informing the community via > their own discussion forums of what is happening, we first find out > via the media outlets. Even then, in their official blog, they haven't > acknowledged the contributions made by extensive community efforts - > just some vague reference to "numerous loyal fans". Its like the > community doesn't matter. > > So I really think it was always seen by Google management as a > commercial/proprietary product, despite the fact it was being > advertised as a community effort. That is why it has failed. > Alternatively, Google has shown they don't know how to run a community > project. > > They still haven't really explained what this announcement means. Will > people lose data they have on Google Wave? > > I would hope that wave can now be forked and developed independently > of Google, with or without Google's help. First step, perhaps, should > be to stop calling it Google Wave. > > Even if Google did decide to change their mind and continue running > the show (as other people seem to be suggesting), they would have to > show some serious commitment (e.g. releasing all the code as open > source). Otherwise I wouldn't be able to trust them not to do the same > thing in the future, again. > -- > Brian May <[email protected]> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google Wave API" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<google-wave-api%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Wave API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api?hl=en.
