Slashdot Mirror
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."
Talk about stupid... eBay already sucks, so they want to share it.
eBay to open source parts of its search functionality, in order to expand their coder resources.
Isn't this the same eBay that was suing people who were making auction search sites that linked to eBay items?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Currently eBay charges as little as a hundred dollars but up to $50,000 dollars before you can run your code against the production database. I think the open source move is a good one however some of us developers with limited resources won't be jumping on until it is "free as in beer".
EBay is a respected player in the business world. They are seen as an ecommerce model that works. When a "real" company with "real" profits suddenly starts looking to the Open Source community, it validates the Open Source model to investors, capitalists, etc...
The significance of this move is beyond EBay.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
While I applaud the small amount of legitimacy this may add to the open source community, it appears this may be just a way to make money off the open source community rather than truly help it. Open source is free and always will be (unless you count the s**tload of work that goes into it). On the other hand, this could also be used to help open source people make some money back for their invaluable efforts. The cynic in me thinks it's the former though, not the ladder. Only time will tell.
Whenever I do a search on Ebay, I always find ridiculous auctions. Just do a search for a Powermac G5 and you'll see what I mean. There are inevitably those auctions with buy it now of $29 where they claim you'll get a system for free. Of course, I look past those but it would be nice if someone could write a moderation tool that would allow you to filter your results. Perhaps with ebay opening up their systems a bit, a crafty developer could go in and make changes such as this, which would markedly improve the ebay experience.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
There's nothing wrong with them opening their APIs and code to developers, in fact it may prove very useful. Still, it shouldn't be mistaken for a great act of charity on their part.
Isn't it a little hypocritical to have a trademark, a form of intellectual property, to open source?
Not at all (though it happens to be untrue that the term Open Source is a registered trademark). This is exactly what open source does -- use intellectual property law to ensure that the intellectual property is used in the (open/"free") manner that the other wants. If it were just about not claiming intellectual property, people would just make it public domain freeware.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Finally someone from PayPal is speaking up:
http://paypaldoesntsuck.blogspot.com/
Seriously, learn the facts. You ARE FDIC insured with PayPal.