Facebook to open source its developer platform in Q2 2008?

Although I am not sure how open FB is, FB offers something called 'Facebook Open Platform'. acebook Open Platform is a snapshot of the infrastructure that runs Facebook Platform. It includes the API infrastructure, the FBML parser, the FQL parser, and FBJS, as well as implementations of many common methods and tags.

Facebook Open Platform (except for the FBML parser) is licensed under a Common Public Attribution License (CPAL), which follows the Mozilla Public License (MPL) with two additions:
1. That you include attribution to Facebook on any modifications.
2. That network deployment, or making modifications available over the network, counts as distribution, which makes the license appropriate for Web services.

Let me know if you have tried it on your machine: http://developers.facebook.com/fbopen...

Q2 will end soon enough.

The core competency of a social network is not the API, but its market share and hosting servers.

Sure thing. And hopefully, Facebook can attract more usefully applications on its platform. Currently, the apps on Facebook is way too entertainment focus. That might helps Facebook in the short term. But in the long run, it needs more useful apps on top of it.