PiratePad is EtherPad, elsewhere

After Google purchased the collaborative text editing site EtherPad and subsequently screwed up by trying to turn off the ability to create new pads, many people have lost confidence in Google's ability to effectively host their data on EtherPad. Google has been clear that it is their long-term plan to drop EtherPad as a service, but at the same time they have already begun open-sourcing the code for EtherPad so that others may make use of it.

PiratePad is a new site hosted by the Pirate Party using the EtherPad code to offer an alternative place to host your pads. Though the domain doesn't instill all kinds of confidence (I mean, do you really want to rely on a service with the name "pirate" in the domain?), it's nice to see what's possible with EtherPad's source code being opened up. And since the Pirate Party has not indicated any intention to shutter the service, it might be a way to ensure that you can keep consistently going back to the same service long after Google's decided that EtherPad's time has come.

I'd like to see someone come up with a very straightforward installer for EtherPad so that I can add the service's functionality to my own site. Do you use EtherPad, and if so, for what? Can you see yourself using Wave in the future instead of EtherPad?

Tags: collaborative, etherpad, google, google wave, GoogleWave, open source, OpenSource, pirate, pirate pad, PiratePad, source code, SourceCode, text editing, TextEditing