Google have decided to open source the Jaiku Engine and release it under the Apache license on Google Code. The actual Jaiku service won’t close, but neither is Google supporting it. Instead, the service will live on thanks to volunteers. Or, in the words of Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering:
As we mentioned last April, we are in the process of porting Jaiku over to Google App Engine. After the migration is complete, we will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License. While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers.
Jaiku’s Jyri stresses that this isn’t necessarily the end of Jaiku, and that doom-mongerers should wait and see what’ll happen with the site. This in a comment to the announcement on the Jaikido Blog:
While the future is uncertain (it always is), it’s also worth noting that the Jaiku that exists today was developed by independent people who were brought together by an interest to create a cool tool for sharing presence and conversation.
