Facebook Joins the Open Source Party
Social networking site Facebook.com released a portion of their application platform to the open source community today. The move to open source represents an effort by Facebook to compete for developers and applications with Google’s already open source OpenSocial platform.
The download gives developers greater insight into Facebook infrastructure and the opportunity to deliver feedback and direct involvement in future releases of the code base. Facebook’s hope is for more powerful applications and greater adoption among third-party web properties.
The download includes development tools that allow implementation of:
* An Application Programming Interface (API)
* FBML (Facebook Markup Language)
* FBJS (Facebook JavaScript)
* FQL (Facebook Query Language)
The code is released under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL). The package also includes essential libraries for parsing and rendering FBML, released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).
Facebook’s efforts may prove to be a little too late considering MySpace, Yahoo and AOL have already announced their efforts toward adopting OpenSocial.
The release marks the first time Facebook has allowed outsiders an inside look into their infrastructure. To push adoption over the fence, Facebook promises free T-shirts to contributors whose code is incorporated in future releases.
