Is there any services or open source software that is similar to Google docs but made for programming?

This is basically what Subversion/Github is. Allowing many people to work on one project, with version control and measures to prevent you from overwriting other people’s work.

Maybe SubEthaEdit is what you’re looking for? Watch the video. The same technology is built into Coda.

I use Versions for Subversion. It’s really great.

@richardhenry

Thanks, but apparently, those are all made for the Mac..
I don’t use a Mac. I use Ubuntu Linux.

@archaeopteryx Subversion and Github are both open source and available for Linux.

If you’re doing group collaboration across the net, consider a hosted solution like Beanstalk. You could commit to the repository by installing the command line svn client on your machine.

Otherwise, you can use svnadmin create to setup a repository on your local machine.

Maybe watch this video to help you get an idea of what Subversion can do. Although that’s shown on a Mac, the commands are exactly the same on Linux. You’ll be able to install subversion using aptitude or yum.

@richardhenry

Wow, Beanstalk looks great.
Subversion’s a very powerful tool as well!

Thanks buddy. you deserve some lerve. :)

@richardhenry

However, I’ve known Svn before, but I didn’t know it had all those capabilities until now. So thanks a lot for the enlightenment.

@archaeopteryx No problem. We use Subversion on all of our projects by setting up repositories on the project machine provided by Slicehost. The same machine is then used for hosting the project (we build web apps). Enjoy!

@richardhenry is right, using version control (svn, git, bzr) makes the most sense for standard programming collaboration. And there are tons of sites that can host if you don’t want to.

If you’re looking for realtime collaboration, you should also check out EtherPad (for standard editing, possibly coding) or Mozilla’s new Bespin project.

@ben

Thanks a lot man!
That was great too! ;)