JGate Blog

AppJet was a website that let users create web applications in a client web browser, with no other client software. It went public beta in December 2007. "AppJet" also refers to the server-side JavaScript framework that powers AppJet applications. 

AppJet Inc. not only provided app hosting, they also released appjet.jar to the community with everything needed to run applications on own servers. Later it has been open sourced in the version used to run the EtherPad platform. The multi-app hosting technology however, was kept as their secret sauce.

The Clone

Using the original service, a few community members came up with the idea of an AppJet clone simply by executing (eval) sub applications from a running instance of appjet.jar. The idea of an alternative hosting platform was born. In February 2009, we at JGate took the idea and added multi-tenancy, multi-app hosting, thus building an alternative platform. Herby, one of the active community members added new ideas and provided security tips. He also came up with his own AppJet clone implementation following a different approach.

Taking The Torch

In June 2009 AppJet Inc. informed their users, that they were cancelling AppJet hosting a month later. This was a big surprise, because the platform was amazingly hosting over 2,500 apps at that time. AppJet played their joker with their new EtherPad realtime communication platform, which they had developed in parallel on AppJet. It was years ahead of Google's Wave platform which played in the same field. AppJet Inc. concentrated on a new business model and left app hosting out of focus.

AppJet users however looked for something to migrate their work to. Having the clone platform, it was time for JGate to take the torch and to start hosting migrated apps. Community members wrote libraries to migrate even the data to the new platform. Since then JGate is hosting the old jewels, like infinitecanvas from the Microsoft Live Labs, or Groupr as well as newly developed apps of all sorts.