MindTouch DekiWiki: open source, cross-platform wiki...

by jcannon on November 27, 2007 06:41pm

For those who've been participating on Port 25 since the beginning, you may have noticed two recurring themes. One, Microsoft has a focus on generativity - or the ability for technology to be extensible to others, be they community or commercial developers. Windows, Office - the Live APIs - are all examples of the ability for technology to serve a purpose, and allow others to build new purposes simultaneously. The other is a focus on supporting and growing business partners. Over the past two years, we've talked to great partners like Centrify, BitRock, Quest and Mindtouch. In fact, the latter re-enforces the former.

Today is no different - we're glad to have Mindtouch return with a guest blog from Aaron Fulkerson, Mindtouch Co-Founder, with an update on their .net-based open source, cross-platform wiki solution. Take it away, Aaron.

Thanks for having us Jamie.

Since we last talked MindTouch has managed to propel itself into the pole position of our space. Specifically, MindTouch's Deki Wiki is the most popular commercially supported wiki there is. Our rate of adoption outpaces our most well-known competitor by a factor of 30x.Our software is currently being downloaded and installed more than 700 times a day and growing.

Why? How? Well, first of all, we've listened intently to our community of users and it has grown to an active and vibrant group of a couple thousand who have translated our application into 7 languages, filed bug reports, written code patches, and developed application extensions. They've also been very active in steering the product road map. Next, we've developed a compelling platform. The only platform in this space in fact. What I mean by "platform" is two fold. Deki Wiki has the most complete API. Deki Wiki's API has 99 REST-based methods and make it very easy to integrate the wiki or to build new applications, learn more here: https://wiki.opengarden.org/Deki_Wiki/API_Reference.

Point two, Deki Wiki has a web-service extension model that makes it the most extensible in this space. Finally, what's really set us apart from any other applications in this space is that MindTouch's Deki Wiki facilitates, even for non-technical users, the ability to create and share of application and content mashups. This will become clear in the demo video.

I should mention Deki Wiki is developed in C# on .NET and it is compatible with Mono. Extending it is language agnostic and it's platform independent thanks to the good folks working on Mono at Novell. Watch the demo video, I'm certain you'll be impressed with the power, usefulness, and uniqueness of what MindTouch is building. Then go download and install. It's free, open source, and thanks to the VMware certified image it can be installed in just over 5 minutes.

Thanks for having us Jamie and Port 25.