Will Facebook Go Open Source to Spite Google's Open Social Platform?

Will Facebook Go Open Source to Spite Google's Open Social Platform?
In what critics see as a response to Google's push to promote itsOpen Social platform, rumors have surfaced that Facebook will be making its application platform open source.

Google originally launched Open Social a couple months ago as a common platform for the creation of custom applications for social-networking Web sites. The platform uses common APIs or application programming interfaces to make applications adaptable to a variety of different services. Yahoo and MySpace have already expressed interest in Open Social.

Facebook's application platform is nearing its one-year anniversary. Over the past year the ability to create and use custom applications has proven as a big selling point of the social-networking service.

Turning the application platform open-source would allow developers to easily adapt applications for a wide variety of other social networks and other services without needing Facebook to intervene as a middle-man. Open source could also eliminate many of the complaints regarding Facebook's application platform.

Google's been in the business of proving and demonstrating that an open-source platform is always a good path, so now it's just time to wait and see how decision will affect the growing world of customized social-networking applications.
source-http://blogs.pcworld.com/