Deki: Wiki 3.0?
I’ve just come across MindTouch’s Deki which aims to evolve wikis to the next level. Although I haven’t had chance to install it yet – it’s only free for up to 5 users and then prohibitively expensive – Deki looks like it could be the next wiki paradigm. You can see it in action at OpenGarden, a Mindtouch-sponsored Open Source community. The main feature of Deki is its semantic web possibilities. There’s a review of Deki over at Read/Write Web if you’re interested in more details. Personally, I can’t wait for this type of web app to filter down to the free level so I can use it with my students! 🙂
Update: I’ve discovered that Deki is actually Open Source, but that it’s an ‘OSI-approved commercially supported open source wiki’. This means that the source code is available, but to use it as-is, you have to buy it. Fear not, as Mindtouch’s Wik.is site will allow you to create a free wiki with a version of Deki that is a couple of releases old!
Thanks for spreading the word! Let me clarify one thing though, Deki Wiki is free open source software, as in totally free! No limitations, no strings attached. You can download it and use it to all your heart’s content as I hope you will! 😉 Check out the demo page at http://wiki.opengarden.org/Deki_Wiki/Release/Hayes
MindTouch Deki, on the other hand, is a pre-packaged installation of Deki Wiki in a virtual machine using VMware. It’s targeted at corporations who need technical and end-user support. Compared to other solutions with similar support, it’s actually very competitive.
Hope that helped clarify things a bit. 🙂
Cheers,
– Steve
(MindTouch co-founder)
Hi Steve,
Thanks for that clarification – I’m certainly going to give it a spin! Downloads of both the ‘stable’ and ‘beta’ releases of DekiWiki can be found here: http://www.opengarden.org/dekiwiki
I’ve just tried to download and install DekiWiki, but to my disappointment – one shared by Chris Craft it’s all but uninstallable by Joe Average. It depends on root access to one’s server, etc.
Oh well, hopefull wik.is will be upgraded soon and we’ll all be able to share in the free semantic webified goodness. 🙂