WebProNews

Major Companies Endorse Legal Agreement For Open Standards

Sharing open source software just got a whole lot easier.  The Open Web Foundation has announced the availability of the Open Web Foundation Agreement, and some huge corporations - namely Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo - have given the arrangement their figurative seal of approval.

Google Programming Language on the "Go"

Update: Philipp Lenssen notes that someone has already developed a language called Go! (with an exclamation point). There is a book on it here. The author wants Google to change the name. This could get confusing for developers looking to use Go, although, it could also help sales of the Go! book. It wouldn't make for very happy customers, however.

MySpace Opens Up Recommendation Engine

MySpace has announced an open source framework for "distributed computation," which is ultimately a recommendation engine. It's called Qizmt, and it's the feature the social network currently uses for its "People you may Know" feature. "Qizmt can be used for many operations that require processing large amounts of data such as collaborative filtering for recommendations and analytics," explains MySpace COO Mike Jones.

Facebook Open Sources FriendFeed Web Server

About a month ago, Facebook announced that it was acquiring FriendFeed. Today the company announced it is open sourcing Tornado, a web server framework originally developed by the FriendFeed team.

Another Google Summer Of Code Concludes

Google's fifth Summer of Code has ended, and by all accounts, it was quite a success.  Indeed, the students' official success rate this year was judged to be the highest ever, and with 2,000 mentors and 1,000 students participating, that's no statistical fluke. The Summer of Code is, in case you didn't know, a program Google runs to bring young people into contact with free and open source projects.  Accepted students are given a choice between many different projects (there were 150 options this year), along with mentors and stipends.

Adobe Open Sources 2 Flash Frameworks

Adobe has announced two new Flash Platform open source initiatives: Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) and the Text Layout Framework (TLF). The former is part of the project previously known as Strobe.

Mozilla Starts Big Collection of Open Web Tools

Mozilla has launched a new directory with the goal of providing a one-stop shop for open web tools and resources for developers. It is called the Open Web tools Directory. The reason Mozilla says it decided to start this directory is simply because there isn't one like it. "There's no central index of these tools," the company says in a blog post.

Second Life Gets New Open Source Viewer

Second Life creators Linden Lab have launched a new Second Life-compatible viewer, which the company developed with the open source community. The company's goal was to create a "widely-used, openly developed version of the Second Life client." Snowglobe will contain new Second Life features before they become available in the official release. That said, not all features will make it there.

Wikipedia Adding Video By End Of The Summer

Okay, no, not really—but the encyclopedia anyone can edit is looking to add video to its offerings, according to Technology Review (via RWW).

Google Lets Mac Users Quickly Search Outside the Browser

Earlier in the year, Google gave developers a preview of a new open-source quick search box for Mac outside of the browser. The company has now made this available to everyone.