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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."
And this differs from any company that "supports" OSS how? Its all about free labor for the corporations!
You're wrong. The usual meaning of "support OSS" is that some software company, or hardware manufacturer, has decided to make their software or hardware drivers run on an F/OSS operating system (typically Linux), or interoperate with a F/OSS gui, or something similar.
You're correct however in that eBay supports OSS the same way a counterfeiter supports the right to visit the US mint with a photo camera.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You're right in the way, that is often that way. Anyway such cases are equally unfair and the same exploitation.
However, if I compare Apache and eBay, there is a major difference. Everyone can take the Apache webserver and run its own *independent* website with it.
Can you take "eBay"-code and run your own *independent* auction-site?
EBay is a respected player in the business world.
I wouldn't go that far. Sure, they're making profits hand over fist, but I'm not so sure "respected" is the word I'd use. They're still just one big flea market, with tons and tons of slimy characters.
I don't respond to AC's.