Etherpad allows you to edit documents collaboratively in real-time, much like a live multi-player editor that runs in your browser. Write articles, press releases, to-do lists, etc. together with your friends, fellow students or colleagues, all working on the same document at the same time.
All instances provide access to all data through a well-documented API and supports import/export to many major data exchange formats. And if the built-in feature set isn't enough for you, there's tons of plugins that allow you to customize your instance to suit your needs.
You don't need to set up a server and install Etherpad in order to use it. Just pick one of publicly available instances that friendly people from everywhere around the world have set up. Alternatively, you can set up your own instance by following our installation guide
Etherpad is an open source project. Lots of passionate, helpful individuals have joined and voluntarily contributed every single bit throughout this project: From this website through the documentation to the very core of the application. So, if you like etherpad and would like to give back some love, we'd like to see your contributions! It doesn't matter how familiar you are with real-time applications, or whether you know how to write programs for Node.js. There are plenty of ways to be helpful!
One of the first things you should do is actually use Etherpad, and get to know it - read about it, evangelise it, and engage with the wider community. You can also translate the user interface to your mother tongue or learn how to write plugins. Be creative!
If you'd like to help, get in touch! Also, the wiki is always a valuable resource.
The main development happens on Github. To contribute, fork the main repo, branch off a feature branch from develop, make your changes and commit them, push to your fork and submit a pull request for ether/develop.
Once in a while we merge develop into master, which results in a new release. This means you will always find the latest stable version in the master branch.
Many individuals, companies and organizations have contributed to Etherpad Lite. We'd like to thank them all!
Additionally, our thanks go out to the tens of thousands of developers and organizations who have created all the modules we depend on or contributed in some way to our ability to provide Etherpad Lite as open source.
We'd also like to thank you. You, who've been making Etherpad Lite what it is, if you've been developing awesome features or plugins, whether you're runnning an instance or you're just one of our diligent users.
Thank you!
Copyright © The Etherpad Foundation.
Design © The Apache Software Foundation, adapted by Marcel Klehr — Licensed under the Apache License 2.0
The Etherpad logos by Marcel Klehr are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
