[jdp23]

Congrats Alex and Igore, Hackpad is really impressive. Great move by Dropbox.

What's the state of the opensource alternatives? Etherpad development seems to have plateaued a while ago.

[0x006A]

What features are missing in Etherpad for you?

[jdp23]

The ones Hackpad added :)

And, raw Etherpad has a lot of usability problems as well. Plus it's challenging to integrate it with an outside authentication mechanism.

I've looked at the code some and while on the one hand this could all be added, it's a clunky base. Node's come a long way since etherpad lite started.

[unhush]

Hackpad is an Etherpad fork, so you might conclude that someone has already done the work of wrangling Etherpade code and making those patches. ;)

[jdp23]

Very true! It's not like it defies the laws of physics ... but, it also shows how much effort is needed to get to something with hackpad's usability on the etherpad core: years worth of work from very smart devs.

If collaborative editing were the main focus of what I was working on, I'd say "yay, market opportunity!" But as it is, I just want to be able to plug in (and contribute to) a good open-source option. Which may wind up being Etherpad, but I'd like to do better ...

[unhush]

maybe the hackpad creators will open-source and/or release upstream patches to etherpad! cough

[0x006A]

Could not find any overview of what features hackpad adds exactly (besides requiring a login). Has anyone made an overview?

[jdp23]

The "How to use Hackpad" page has an overview [1] -- unfortunately it's not responding right now :|

For me, three big ones are the checklists, @'s to refer to people and pads, and the much better display of who's changed things.

[1] https://hackpad.com/How-to-use-Hackpad-mlZvEsJykI5

[notastartup]

I also don't see anything new or special about hackpad from Etherpad. Is it simply valuable because it has a user base? How is it that a startup built on open source product is more valuable just by having more users? I fail to see anything special about Hackpad.