Yahoo Allows Outsiders To Innovate On Yahoo E-mail

[engine]

Yahoo Inc. is set to allow outsiders to create new services using the world's most popular consumer e-mail program, in the broadest move the Web has yet seen to enlist independent programmers to build a company's products for it.

Officials of the world's largest Internet media company said on Friday it planned to give away the underlying code to Yahoo Mail, one of the crown jewels of its business, in a bid to encourage software developers to build new applications based on e-mail.

Yahoo Allows Outsiders To Innovate On Yahoo E-mail [today.reuters.co.uk]

[vincevincevince]

I wonder what level this is, whether they are talking about the web-interface or the underlying transport systems.

[rise2it]

My first thought was opening up yahoo mail to HACKERS....

[rflood18]

I agree with you rise2it. Maybe I should close down my yahoo email account

[smells so good]

It's clear that Yahoo is banking on support from its community of users. The article indicates that they (Y!) expect hordes of programmers to descend upon this, creating thousands of useful plug-ins.

My first thought was - hackers. Then I wondered, why? Did project development stall? Did the team leave, or were they shown the door? Does Yahoo really believe that they can garner the community support - ala Firefox? It sounds like that's what they are counting on. And where will we (the users) be left if that support fails to materialize?

As far as how much source is released.. it read to me like all it would be released, or a very large portion. I can't see how this is a good move in any direction, but this is Web 2.0. We shall see.

[miwilliam]

Yahoo already encourages hacking and stuff like that. They sold out to pornography since they have advertising bots in all of their chat rooms. Kind of makes you wonder. They must be liberal owned?