Open Source Web Services
November 14, 2006
The Big in Japan team decided to release the source code for each of their web service including FrankenFeed, elfURL, InstantFeed, QwikPing, FeedVault and SocialMail (PodServe is being held back for now). The post titled, “Opening The Source at Big in Japan” details the project. Each tool was written using Ruby on Rails and will serve as a great guide for anyone looking to develop their own web service using rails.
Why give away the code? The simple answer is that the company’s efforts are being focused on building and managing social tools for paying clients instead of the free web services developed over the last year. It is too hard to keep a suite of tools relevant if you are not constantly working to improve them. What was hot a year ago may be worthless tomorrow if you are not careful. So instead of letting the tools die a lonely death, the company decided to let them run free. Hopefully each of them will find a new, more relevant home.
Big in Japan will still keep the current tools running so enjoy the code or the service. The option is yours.
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