Yahoo opens email code!

[Dashken]

YAHOO is set to allow third-party developers to use its consumer email program create new web services

Officials of the world's largest internet media company said 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 email.

The move is one the broadest ever taken by an internet company to enlist independent programmers to build its products.

The move to open up the underlying code of Yahoo Mail - used by 257 million people - is designed to spark development of thousands of new email applications built not only by Yahoo engineers but by outside companies and individuals.

Chad Dickerson, head of Yahoo’s software developer relations program, said he believed that the open approach to programming represented the biggest single web software ever to be opened up for public development.

"Yahoo is a very large company but we can't build every application that a user might want," Mr Dickerson said. "You can imagine tens of thousands of niche applications (springing) from Yahoo Mail."

Software developers have traditionally kept careful control of the underlying programming code of their products and allowed outsiders to make only incremental improvements. In recent years, web developers have opened up that process to encourage outsiders far deeper access to the underlying code.

Open applications like Google Maps and Yahoo's own Flickr have inspired a new wave of programming in which developers can combine software features from different companies to create what are known as "mashups" - hybrid web products.

The company made the announcement ahead of a 24-hour "Yahoo Hack Day," where it has invited more than 500 most youthful outside programmers to build new applications using Yahoo services. Hack is used in its original sense of "creative programming" not illicit sense of breaking into computers.

"Hack Day" mixes web programming competitions, overnight slumber party and a music festival where pop music superstar Beck has been hired to play a concert on the Yahoo campus.

Source: http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...nbv%5E,00.html