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."

Comments

interesting

[R.D.Olivaw]

What exactly is the definition of 'open source'. Could you open code to a specific community and still call it open source?

Nice way of putting it

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It allows individual developers and companies to access source code for various eBay and PayPal tools and applications.

Or, phrasing it another way, it allows Ebaypal to take advantage of work done for them for free by someone else.

Re:So OSS-Developers should work unpayed for eBay?

[Bimo_Dude]

FTA: Even though Isaacs stressed that the open source approach was an "easy decision to make," courting the open-source community can sometimes prove difficult.

Since he made this statement, it may be possible that he has something (no idea what) in mind to return to the "community." IMHO, it appears that he already knows that eBay is not likely to get something for nothing.

Moderation might help, but it won't happen.

[J Barnes]

Ebay certainly doesn't make it intuitive to report suspicious/fraudulent auctions. I did a recent search for Canon 1ds Mark 1 cameras and I found one listed for about 2k under it's normal price. In looking at the seller's other items, I discovered about 60 high priced tech items ranging from miniDV camcorders to plasma monitors, all listed in lots of three and ending at the same time.

Checking the seller's previous ebay activity, it contained only small purchases of seeds and gardening supplies and then lay dormant for a year until suddenly about 60 high priced items showed up.

That took about 3 minutes of work to check out, but I had to spend another 20 minutes trying to figure out how to report a fraudulent auction to ebay.

I think they really just don't want to be bothered with policing their own site and responding to complaints, and that's pretty unfortunate as their service is amazingly efficient and well-liked in nearly every other respect.

Re:Moderation might help, but it won't happen.

[jargoone]

Like the parent to your post, I was doing lots of searches for Powermac G5s. I wrote a Perl script to search auctions matching a specific search, and put the results in an HTML page. In doing so, I found tons of auctions like you describe.

Since the accounts have positive feedback, I came up with the theory that they are phished accounts. They have the same common indicators: expensive item, cheap price, email address in the body of the auction, and usually pre-approval is required to bid. Lots of times they'll have pictures of an item different than they're describing. They sometimes contain poor English.

You can have fun emailing the "seller" and fucking with them a little. They always want you to send them your contact info so you can complete payment through Square Trade, who does not accept payments. I'm guessing the next step is a fake escrow site and a Western Union payment, but I haven't gotten that far.

As you know, you can report these auctions, in the eBay security center. I can't give a URL, because my stupid web filtering software flags that part of eBay's site as phishing/fraud. I report the ones I see, and they're usually taken down very quickly. My view is that I'm helping people who may not be quite as wise.

gimics

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAT, but i'm sorry, i am so sick of major corporation taking advantage of the "open source" hype simply for the benefit of their business.

it helps them in two ways right off the bat:
1. it's a marketing gimic, because the news gets spread (as here) and
2. it garners them a better image immediately, because regardless of whether a single line of code gets written, they look good for being so magnanimous.

and if it DOES get written, then you can add #3 to that list: free code for ___, inc.

free software should be a *given* -- not some special marketing campaign. /me steps off box of detergent

Re:This is Good

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

EBay is a respected player in the business world.

Surely you must be joking. They use an e-commerce structure (Paypal) that acts as a bank, handles millions and millions of dollars like a bank, is structured exactly like a bank, but is *not FDIC-insured* and has the gall to block accounts at random without explanation or recourse.

I don't really know what's respectful about using such a shaky financial tool to do business. I'm surprised they haven't been taken under by some huge class-action lawsuit, or by the feds who should damn well step in and force them to play by the book already.

doesn't sound "open source" to me

[cahiha]

The Community Codebase is free for all members of eBay's Developers Program and PayPal Developer Network

If you have to be a member of some "developer program" or "developer network", then the code isn't open source. The term "Community Codebase" also suggests that it isn't open source, but that it is a program like Microsoft's "Shared Source" or Sun's "Community Source". Let's hope that eBay didn't mislabel a non-open source license as open source.

Even if the eBay code turns out to be truly open source, it is still closely tied to eBay's service. On balance, it's still better if such code is open sourced, but the decision for eBay to open source a bit of client code is a completely different business decision than, say, IBM or Intel open sourcing a compiler.

Companies like Sun, Microsoft, and (possibly) eBay seem to be trying hard to redefine the term open source for their own marketing purposes. Don't let them get away with it. A company that misapplies the term open source is being deceptive and should be condemned strongly.

(I suppose it isn't surprising that someone like McVoy would go along with this sort of thing; he has, after all, been trying to take advantage of the open source community as well.)

Re:Open source eBay?

[oneandoneis2]

Not sure about that, but it IS the same eBay that threatened to delete user's accounts because they were selling Linux. . .

Excuse me while I laugh...

[Famatra]

"EBay is a respected player in the business world."

That's true, if you completely reverse the statement. EBay and, if I may say so, their satanic 'child' PayPal are a few of the worst companies I've ever had the displeasure of doing business with.

Starting with the illegitamate charge backs (PayPal) I've mentioned on Slashdot on my most recent post, poor customer service (PayPal & Ebay) in the form of not responding to emails, a nice little trick of charging for auctions that were canceled (eBay), cancelling an auction the day before for selling game box of World of Warcraft (eBay) and more. I really would hate to be someone who does a lot of business with them.

If eBay really has opened up some code and it is Open enough that you have the freedom, as you should, to take it and use it as you want then I look forward to competing products that will result. I'd guess that anyone could do customer service better then eBay and if they want to give out the source to tools that can help their competitors (and others) why not :).