Google announces plan to launch a working subset of Google Wave. The open source subset, which will be called Wave in a Box, packages the software to allow organizations to host their own waves. However, the company says that the solution will not have the full functionality of Google Wave.

Last month, Google announced that it would stop the development of the communication and collaboration system because of weak levels of user adoption.

The company also said that the central parts of the code are already open source. Google also said that it would develop solutions to allow users to extract their content from Google Wave.

Wave in a Box will run on the existing open source code and will come with a server and a web client. The subset also has features such as threaded conversations, the ability to federate with other Wave in a Box instances and the capability to import data from Google Wave.

Vendors such as SAP, Novell and ProcessOne are already working on wave technology and the Wave Federation Protocol. A number of open source projects that incorporate wave features are also sprouting up.