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eBay Starts Open-Source Community
Matt wrote to mention a MacWorld story discussing a new initiative by auction site eBay to open source parts of its search functionality, in order to expand their coder resources. From the article: " The software will be available under a new program called Community Codebase, which was announced at the eBay Developers Conference in San Jose, California, on Tuesday. The Community Codebase is free for all members of eBay's Developers Program and PayPal Developer Network. (Pay Pal is owned by eBay.) It allows individual developers and companies to access source code for various eBay and PayPal tools and applications. An example is a Java application that allows TiVo users to search and bid on items via their digital video recorder boxes. Other examples include a Firefox toolbar, various Pay Pal toolkits and an application used to extract information from Pay Pal's database and putting it into Microsoft Corp.'s Excel spreadsheet software."
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
Open Source is a registered trademark of the Open Source Initiative. You cannot call something open source if it does not meet the requirements of the definition
Full disclosure: I work in the Developer Support group at eBay.
There are two changes that are relevant for you. The first is the creation of the Community Codebase. All projects will be licensed under OSI acceptable licenses. Most of the current contents are under the MIT license. Free as in speech...
The other major change is the removal of all fees from the Individual Tier and the increase in the call limits from 50/day to 10000/month. In other words, you can now register in the Developer Program at the Individual Tier and go live with your application without paying any fees at all. Free as in beer...
Cheers,
Bruce Thompson
Staff DTS Engineer
eBay Inc.
Who, me?
Full disclosure: I work for eBay in the Developer Support Group.
What the Community Codebase is about is making it easier for new applications to go live that access eBay, not to open the eBay system's code, or to try to create an unpaid labor market for maintaining eBay's code.
There are around 1500 third party applications that use the eBay API suites to create new listings on eBay, etc. A couple of quick examples to get a feel are ChannelAdvisor (channeladvisor.com), SquareTrade (squaretrade.com) and a host of others.
Approximately 20% of all eBay listings are not listed through the eBay website but rather through these third-party applications. The goal of the Community Codebase and the changes to the Individual Tier of the eBay Developers Program is to make it easier to write applications that access eBay.
Hope this helps,
Bruce Thompson
Staff DTS Engineer
eBay Inc.
Who, me?
Full disclosure: I work for eBay in the Developer Support group.
I'm honestly not sure where the idea that we are open sourcing our search code came from. Let me quickly correct that: eBay is not open sourcing any of it's operational software.
What we are doing is creating an open source repository for our SDKs and sample code for accessing the eBay systems. What other sort of projects get hosted on the Community Codebase remains to be seen, but the idea is that eBay engineers and third-party developers will be able to work together on projects that benefit the community as a whole.
We are also changing the terms of the Individual Tier of the eBay Developers Program allowing third-party applications to access the eBay systems without any fees and with increased monthly call limits.
The APIs that are available cover searching, listing auctions, managing feedback and purchases, etc.
The benefit to the individual is to enable developers who want to be able to access the eBay site to do so without the expense of joining the Commercial Tiers of the Program; the benefit to eBay is that every new application that goes live tends to represent an increase in listings and that translates into an increase in revenue.
Cheers,
Bruce Thompson
Staff DTS Engineer
eBay Inc.
Who, me?
Hi Rosco,
It's not so much that there are other auction sites using eBay's backend but rather around 1500 applications of various sorts that provide services to eBay buyers and/or sellers. To get a sense of what's available, head over to the Solutions Directory for a list.
Cheers,
Bruce.
Who, me?
I see your points. And I admitt, that "eBay *only* takes" is not precisely enough to express it.
But my rationale on it is, that all these 3rd-party applications will be centered around the eBay-platform.
While improvements to these 3rd party apps will benefit the OSS-developers App as well as eBay, the "collective" effect of many improvements towards the single central platform will benefit eBay more, than those developers.
Of course, one can disagree to my rationale and certainly you will, arguing that there is no "aggregated" effect on the central platform.
I don't think it is realy a question who of us is right. What matters is, if the developers that participate in this project feel screewed or not.
If I where in your position I would prepare for some additional "incentive" for developers to participate. Doesn't neccessarily be direct payment, small discounts on the fees for the trades or even just some rewards for expecially intresting/usefull developments would certainly do.
Small goodies like that certainly give develpment some OSS additional boost, anyway.
eBay certainly isn't a street begger, that has to pass its had around and ask for gifts.
Hi,
While on the one hand there are no fees or royalties of any kind to join the eBay Developers Program at the individual Tier, it is necessary to join the program in order to be able to call the eBay APIs.
I haven't checked, but I do not believe you need to be registered in the program in order to access the Community Codebase, nor to grab a copy of anything there. It's just that it won't necessarily be all that useful if you are not a member of the program as you will be unable to access our systems without membership.
If that disqualifies the program for being called "OSI acceptable" then I withdraw the claim. I do know that most if not all of the current contents of the repository are licensed under the MIT license.
Cheers,
Bruce.
Who, me?
This is not true. They abandoned their trademark application.
You're right. 50 calls a day is kinda restrictive. That's why we've come to our senses and upped the limit for the individual tier to 10,000 calls a month (about 6 times as many calls). Oh, and as Bruce mentioned, we've gotten rid of the fee that you had to pay to make calls to the eBay production server.
Alan Lewis
Technical Evangelist
eBay Developers Program
It is, however, FDIC "pass-through" insured.
(i.e. the bank that actually holds the funds is FDIC insured, so if paypal folds, your money is still held in a FDIC insured account and would be eligible to be covered by FDIC insurance.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."