"...Like locked cell phones and copy-protected music, Facebook is on the wrong side of the open-network debate. Facebook is a sealed bubble. Facebook users are locked into Facebook, just as iTunes locks music fans to Apple's iPod..."

Facebook announced on Monday that a large portion of its 3rd party application platform was available as open source.

The other week, when representatives from Facebook mentioned that they'd be open-sourcing significant portions of their platform, I hazarded a guess that they would be providing at most a set of APIs. Now that Facebook's actually released some code under the aegis of the Facebook Open Platform, I had a look-see. To my delight, I saw more than just APIs.

RMS: « Was Facebook built by the CIA? Links of personnel suggest that it was.

We don't need proof of any specific conspiracy to recognize that peer pressure can lead kids into many sorts of foolish behavior.

Having increased its commitment to open source in recent months, Facebook announced on Friday that a piece of internally created software, "Scribe", will be released back to the open source community.

If you want to enable Facebook Chat for Pidgin in Ubuntu you need to install Facebook Chat for Pidgin plugin.This is a Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin and libpurple messengers. It connects to the new Facebook Chat IM service without the need for an API key.

There’s a nice little Facebook app that’s called “Linux” that proudly displays which distribution you use on your profile page:

A pair of my colleagues forwarded me a pitch today titled, " Disappointing: Facebook Does Open Source like Microsoft." It's an 'interesting' email pitch -- it's a pity I wasn't contacted directly. Essentially what the pitch (which came from Bob Bickel Founder, Ringside Networks by way of PR firm techmarket) alleges is that the CPAL is a poison pill for open source code.

Facebook made its first acquisition, picking up Parakey, a startup founded by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, a pair who created Mozilla's Firefox browser. Although specifics about what exactly Parakey is are few, it is described as a way to bridge the gap between desktop applications and Web functions.