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Nick O’Neill blogged about it, and Facebook confirmed it officially at the Palo Alto 1 Year Anniversary Developers Garage on Thursday, but Facebook has finally released their platform under a modified version of the Mozilla Public License. The code and announcement can be found here, and includes the full API, a parser for FBML, and more. I will probably be trying to sneak in a little info about this in FBML Essentials if I can beat it to press.

What does this mean for you? Well, first of all, there is a good chance (I have not confirmed this) you’ll now see sites like Myspace and LinkedIn also join sites like Bebo in providing a Facebook-style API. It should be an easy decision for them. This also means you are not stuck porting your Apps over to OpenSocial to get them on those networks, assuming they implement this into their own architecture. Ideally, it will take very few changes to port a Facebook App over to other FbPlatform-enabled sites.

Also, if you are building your own social network, you can now cater to all the Facebook developers out there and bring in the rich API Facebook provides. OpenSocial is great, but you do have to keep in mind it is still in beta – while new, I see no “beta” put in front of this new Facebook Open Platform.

The other thing you should take into account is that because it is Open Source, you can now contribute back to the platform. If you see something in the platform that is strongly needed, you simply have to sign the Contribution Agreement they provide and if they implement your change they’ll even send you a (drum roll please) T-Shirt! (they didn’t say if the T-Shirt was free or not) In reality though, we as developers now have some responsibility to give back to Facebook – that is the essence of Open Source.

I think Facebook just played their cards for Google on this one. Their environment is still closed, but at the very least they are sharing the components that make their closed environment so the world too can get involved. Google now has much stronger pressure to get OpenSocial in order, and in a way that convinces the Facebook platform developers to use OpenSocial instead of the Facebook Open Platform. It’s a race for developers, and I’m afraid Facebook just made the choice for developers to leap to OpenSocial a lot harder.

In just the last week, you have raised $3,230.97 for @Phil801 and @Mrs801’s 2 year old daughter, Serenity. I can’t tell you how amazed I am at the generosity and power of the Social web in raising such funds. There is still much more we can do. Obviously, I had set a goal for $10,000 for today, and perhaps I was a little too ambitious, but I was also in San Francisco for over half this week and wasn’t able to pay as much attention to it as I would have liked to.

I’m going to keep the goal at $10,000 and change the date to Wednesday. Here is how I think we can do it. If you go to this page:

http://www.chipin.com/mywidgets/id/95fe74d0aab6ce8a

I would like you to find the Social Networks you are involved with and post the widget to each one you feel comfortable with. When you add the widget, please send a personalized message about Serenity and the Burns Family, mention that they are on Twitter and other Social Networks. People will donate when they are aware we’re all a part of the same community.

If you have a business or blog you can offer help through – match funds, offer a percent of proceeds to Serenity, or whatever, please don’t hesitate to let me know. The ways to donate are all listed here and if we need to do anything special to help promote your cause or get it set up for you don’t hesitate to ask. (Note that we have also added an Amazon wishlist on the sidebar which the Burns Family has put items needed that you can buy for the cause of Serenity if you would prefer not to donate cash)

I just want to share that as Tyler Jensen was setting up the bank account for the Burns family last week he was sharing the story of Serenity with an old Lady in Line. Out of pure generosity and compassion for this little girl, that kind old lady that didn’t even know him gave Tyler $5 to put in the Bank Account Tyler was setting up. There have been many donations like that, and any little amount helps.

Phil tells me that just his last trip to get medicine cost him over $500. This is not going to be a cheap year for the Burns family – let’s all work together to help them out.

UPDATE: You can also add it to your Facebook profile by clicking on this link:

http://fb.chipin.com/facebook/add_to_profile_and_redirect/9454

Month: June 2008

What an Amazing Week in Donations for Serenity!