June 28th, 2005
Is eBay really friendly to open source?
This week eBay launched its previously-announced eBay Community Codebase. The service, hosted by CollabNet, lets developers enhance eBay in a variety of directions. There’s now an eBay toolbar for Firefox, for instance, and a TiVo plug-in.
All well and good. But when you open yourself up to open source developers it’s a two-way street. There are going to be some ideas you don’t like.
Here’s one. It’s a national search function for Craigslist, now 25% owned by eBay. It’s a natural extension, but Craigslist has ordered it shut down, claiming they’re all about the local. The developer did, and that may be the end of the story.
But it should not end the discussion.
I fear many companies tip-toeing into the open source world expect this to be a one-way street. That is, you write stuff that I like and I’ll take all the benefit, plus I’ll control what you write at the same time.
Life doesn’t work that way. When you open yourself up to third parties, you open yourself up. If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the open source kitchen.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 06/28/05
