Google just opened the Google Wave developer sandbox for federation. Developers can now begin prototyping tools against WaveSandbox.com. Google tested earlier versions of Wave with a small number of developers on the Wave sandbox and this server will now become the platform for testing interoperability between different Wave servers. Google also released a how-to document that explains how to set up a Java-based Wave server over the weekend. More details about how to implement the Wave Federation Protocol can be found here.
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Running Wave on Your Own Server
Developers who want to run their own Wave server can find all the necessary information for setting up a Wave Federation Prototype Server in these documents. The server is written in Java and should run on Windows, OSX and Linux-based machines. In the documentation, the Wave team explains how to run the server as an extension to the open source OpenFire XMPP server, though any XEP-00114 compatible XMPP server should be able to talk to the Wave server.
The Google Wave team points out that this is not even close to the final implementation of the Wave protocol and that things will inevitably change. The team also asks developers to contribute to the development of the Wave prototype server.
As we pointed out last week, the federation protocol is an integral part of Google's plans for Wave. If Google wants Wave to compete with email, it will have to create a distributed network of providers and this is a first step in that direction.
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