Aehso’s Output

Three recent posts on OpenSocial that I’ve come across that all touch on points I raised in my last two posts that are worth sharing:

• Terms (Shelley Powers) – comments on the very important issue of the terms and conditions attached to usage of the OpenSocial APIs – I had completely overlooked this. T&C are normally attached to proprietary products, not open standards. So it looks like we are really looking at Google APIs, not open standards here.
• Where the hell is the Container API? (Russell Beattie). Short, to the point, and bang on the money. I’m not in a rush so I’m happy to wait for important web API specifications to be drafted, discussed, refined, voted upon and published via a credible authority. But the OpenSocial development process is not open (a newsgroup of pleading users does not make it so).
• Google OpenSocial: Technical Overview and Critique – Dare Obasanjo. Too much to summarize here, go read it.

All in all I’m beginning to think the use of the term Open in OpenSocial is terribly misleading marketing speak. I’d like to think this is an accident (after all Google care about the continued growth of an open internet right?) but there is such a monstrous gap in the process behind and the function of OpenSocial and how other open APIs and standards are developed that I can only assume that this is all a marketing exercise to misdirect attention away from Facebook at the cost of ushering out a half-baked alternative. The Campfire One video only re-enforces this – it is incredibly corny and lacking in substance!

APIs and standards are sometimes hacked together by partnerships in order to try address immediate market share concerns – this is beginning to look like yet another of these efforts. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong when the Container API documentation is published but I’m not holding my breath…

aehso google, opensocial, social, widgets