EtherPad

[Nathan Handler]

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:52 AM, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> http://etherpad.org/
>
> This seems like a potentially useful tool for the Ubuntu community,
> especially at UDS time.  It's a bit more Google Docs than Gobby, being
> browser-based, but is free software and seems worth exploring as an
> alternative.  Has anyone tried it?  What was your experience?
>
> There are some public installations already available which you can
> experiment with.

I've used it before for some team collaboration. There is a public
instance available on ubuntu-uk.org [1]. It is very nice for
brainstorming, but I do not like using it to keep a permanent archive
of a discussion. The wiki or a website would be much better suited as
an archive. EtherPad also has the ability to export (and import)
documents in a variety of formats, which would make it very easy for
teams to send out a copy of the notes from their UDS sessions. The
biggest issue that we have faced is that if a pad is being used for an
extended period of time (i.e. more than one meeting), many
participants end up needing to be constantly reminded about the URL of
the pad. This issue is non-existent with Gobby, since it provides a
document list. However, overall, EtherPad is very easy to setup and
use (since it does not require installing anything), and provides
enough features to meet most of our needs.

Nathan

[1] http://pad.ubuntu-uk.org/