When you’re a big company, especially one that makes its money on free web services and advertising, it’s very easy to say you love open source.
Open Source will get you nice PR, and you may even release parts of your code to get even better PR. Sadly, things don’t always work as you expect them to.
The legal department of Facebook has recently forbidden EventPress developer, Kunal Bhalla, to continue his (brilliant) work on EventPress, as it’s similar to a Facebook product (Facebook events).
I’m afraid I currently have to stop working on EventPress — the open source/legal department at my new employer: FB informed me today that I’m not allowed to contribute to anything that is similar to a product offered by Facebook (events). Please feel free to fork and develop it further as you require.
Regards,
Kunal[ here's the announcement: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/eventpress/olNCfNZfEP0 ]
EventPress is a well written open source plug-in that provides a non trivial feature such as event management to wordpress site owners. As event management is not easy stuff, there are not many contenders.
Apparently, Kunal got hired by Facebook, and subsequently had to stop his open source development right after.
It’s a real shame things have to go like that.
This is a great thing. It shows exactly why software should be open source, to allow development to continue even when someone like an employer decides that a single developer can no longer work on a project. Any company or individual that needs this software can either develop or fund continued development on this software as long as they still require it.
In closing, thanks Facebook for yet again showing why software should be Free