Wave Federation Begins

Google's Wave project has taken a step forward as the company has started to allow private Wave servers to federate, or interconnect, with Google's Wave Sandbox server. Google had previously released a Prototype Server for the Wave protocol, which allowed developers to experiment with the Wave collaboration environment. The Prototype server is based on XMPP (previously known as Jabber) protocol and implemented using XMPP servers such as OpenFire. The Federation Protocol is being created and documented as a stand alone specification.

Google says that it is aiming to create an "open source production quality reference implementation" of the server and is looking forward to allowing federation with wave.google.com, the preview server, at some point in the future. For now, developers only have access to Google's development and test server at WaveSandbox.com. There were concerns expressed about the use of Google Wave within companies; the German Federal Office for Information Security had complained that Google would have access to all data within the collaboration system. However, the availability of private servers will make it possible for companies to have secure Wave servers of their own, and to take control of their own data.

(djwm)