Introducing 'Petal,' an open-source screen-sharing tool that lets you code with remote colleagues as if you were sitting right next to each other.
Imagine this: you need to fix complex code with a colleague living in a distant country. Until now, we’ve likely struggled through video conferencing programs, sharing screens, and shouting, “Not there, to the right! Wait, hold on, let me take mouse control.”
But what if you could have two mouse cursors moving on the screen, as if someone were actually sitting at your computer, allowing you to write code as naturally as if you were talking side-by-side? That legendary collaborative experience once whispered about among developers is now available again—and it’s ‘free.’ This is the story of Petal, a new open-source tool.
Why Does This Matter?
In an era where remote work is the norm, ‘pair programming’ (a method where two developers collaborate on one computer, sharing the workload) plays a decisive role in development productivity, even when developers aren’t in the same physical space.
However, the screen-sharing features of video conferencing tools we’ve commonly used have been ‘one-sided.’ It was a structure where one person watched the screen blankly while the other did all the controlling. This disconnect was a major wall hindering creative collaboration. There was once a tool called Screenhero that perfectly solved this frustration, but it left countless developers stranded after being acquired by Slack and having its service discontinued [DEV Community article on Screenhero].
Petal reconnects this ‘severed collaboration.’ It carries significant meaning for users because it has returned as an open-source project that anyone can share and evolve, rather than a paid service that vanishes based on a company’s policy.
Easy to Understand
To make Petal easy to understand, let’s use an analogy.
What if existing screen-sharing tools were like a ‘TV broadcast’? We just watch the screen being broadcast, but we can’t directly modify or change the content on the screen. In contrast, a tool like Petal is like ‘a single sheet of paper and two pens on the same desk.’ Two people can write, erase, and draw on the same piece of paper at the same time.
Technically, this is sometimes called a ‘Dual Mouse Cursor’ [Screenhero introduction in Turkish]. It creates an environment where your mouse pointer moves in real-time as if alive on the other person’s screen, allowing for free operation. Petal implements this environment with ‘Low Latency’ (extremely fast response speed with almost no lag) and ‘High Resolution’ (extremely sharp screens), providing an immersive experience as if you were sitting right next to each other [Petal Official Website].
Where Are We Now?
Petal has now taken its first major steps as an open-source project. Beyond just screen sharing, it is garnering expectations among developers by offering powerful features that allow remote control of the other person’s computer [Petal Official Website].
However, it is still in the early stages. While comparing it to the high level of perfection once held by the legendary tool Screenhero, it remains to be seen how stably Petal can handle the requirements of many developers. Especially since stability is crucial for technical collaboration tools, many open-source contributors are joining forces to go through the process of increasing its stability.
What’s Next?
As open-source tools like Petal continue to grow, the collaboration methods of teams working remotely will become more sophisticated. ‘Simultaneous operation’ functions are highly likely to become the standard not just for coding, but also for design, documentation, and various other fields.
The most important change is ‘ownership of tools.’ Unlike the past, where a service would become unusable if a company decided to shut it down—as with Screenhero—we are now in an era where anyone can maintain and improve this technology through open source [DEV Community article on Screenhero]. Petal will play a key role in the evolution of remote collaboration from ‘simple video conferencing’ to ‘substantive joint work.’ Your own work environment might soon change just like this.
AI Opinion
The process of screen-sharing tools transforming from ‘broadcasting’ to a ‘shared workspace’ demonstrates the essence of digital collaboration. Petal once again reminds us that the direction technology should aim for is not the tool itself, but how physically close it makes the distance between people. The open-sourcing of collaboration tools is the healthiest trend to prevent data and technical severance caused by a specific company’s service termination.
References
- Petal—OpenSourcePair Programming, https://petal.live/
- I Built anOpenSourceScreenheroReplacement… - DEV Community, https://dev.to/chovy/i-built-an-open-source-screenhero-replacement-for-real-pair-programming-1b98
- Screenhero: Herkese Ekranınızı Paylaşın, Herkes Kontrolü Elde Etti, https://huntscreens.com/tr/products/screenhero
- Simply displaying the screen
- Multiple mouse cursors moving and operating simultaneously
- Fast file transfer speed
- Lack of users
- The service was shut down after being acquired by Slack
- Because of paid subscription policies
- Paid subscription service
- Open-source project
- Closed cloud-based service