I started working on an open-source applet that would monitor your active Ebay bids and flash when someone out-bids you:
And I can use the multiple Ebay APIs to get the data and avoid error-prone screen-scraping to provide a reliable user experience! Man, this will be useful…
People who want to use your application can join the [Developer Program] themselves and insert their own set of keys to enable the application. Since they will presumably want to use it against live data, there will be a charge for them.
Ebay’s reasoning for this is not monetary, rather that they want to promote efficient 3rd-party applications by charging developers large subscription fees, and requiring thorough registration and app certification.
Of course the only option for most developers (open or proprietary) given these restrictions is to screen-scrape, completely defeating the stated purpose of the Developer Program.
It’s amazing that a large company, built largely around a viral business model can be this hypocritical.
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I think you misstate ebay’s reasoning there, whether intentionally or not. The ebay rep in your link said ” Instead, the idea is to ensure that developers write the most efficient applications possible.” That tells me they are saying they want to promote _efficient_ applications, not _high quality_ as you suggest. I think ebay is just trying to give a monetary incentive for developers to use as few API calls as possible to reduce the load for ebay’s servers, which is different that not allowing open source applications because of any perceived quality difference. Additionally, they were quite clear that they disallow screen scraping and even alter their site periodically to defeat screen scraping.
I’m not defending their reasoning here… they will miss out by not allowing your application to work with their auctions and it’s a good example of dumb policy. But I don’t think it’s quite what you make it out to be.
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Good call Ryan, the high-quality bit was an interpretation of their stated goals for the Developer Program, but it’s better to be precise. Updated to say “efficient”.
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eBay are being terribly short-sighted here. Instead of having somebody use their API x times in an hour, the user will simply refresh the site y times per hour. y would have to be orders of magnitude smaller than x to give any benefit to eBay.
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I’d just write the app and use screen scraping. It will involve maintenance of the code, but ultimately thats what OSS is all about.
How can they detect what’s screen-scraping and what’s a legitimate browser? They surely can’t restructure their site code *that much* to stop people from doing this?
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Ryan has it. One other thing to bear in mind is that scraping the site is a really bad idea, not just because it’s “against the rules” but for technical and stability reasons. If you scrape HTML off the site, it means you’re cool with doing business with your own real dollars and cents (or pounds, baht, etc.) using a piece of software that has the chance to break every two weeks, since that’s how often we make HTML changes to ebay.com. If you think that having to re-hax0r your application that frequently is worth not having to pay a one-time fee of $100, then lotsa luck, but as my old mom used to say, “don’t come running to me if you fall down and break both your legs.” (My mom was sort of a strange lady.)
If on the other hand you want to use the API, my team stands ready to help…email us at developer-relations@ebay.com.
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Paul commented while I was composing mine. (I’m not going to use this opportunity to say that a comment moderation queue is an unconscionable restriction on my freedom, but I’m thinking it.)
Muchas gracias for pumping up my blog! The four people who read it regularly and I always appreciate the attention. There’s a specific post in which we discuss this issue in excruciating detail: http://mcmanus.typepad.com/grind/2004/07/write_opensourc.html It’s the post that’s received the most comments of any to my blog since I started publishing a blog more than a year ago, so clearly we’re on to something, as they say.
Astute readers will note that I’ve pledged to pay someone $100 if nobody certifies an open-source eBay API application by February. I’m actually pretty confident that I won’t have to pay up.
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I looked into writing an GTK-based application to be able to bulk post listing (like their TuboLister) awhile back, but like you explained, eBay has made this frustratingly difficult. I’ve ended up not using eBay anymore, since the user experience was so crappy? Who’s got the time or money to waste on a company that cares so little for their Linux customers?
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So you’ll be using the Linux-friendly online marketplace then? Which one would that be?
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So your major selling point is that there are no alternatives?
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Um, no, I’m just trying to get my head around the concept of an online marketplace that is somehow “Linux-hostile” as Brian asserts. It sounds specious to me, an attempt to use Linux’s persecution complex as a debating tactic. (I should mention that I use Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux on a nearly weekly basis as part of my job.) If our API somehow didn’t work with Linux, that would be one thing, but, hello, this is XML we’re talking about.
If you wanted to make an onlhlighting, plugins to extend functionality, and so on).
But the fact is, leafpad is simply MORE FAMILIAR to people coming from a certain other OS. I use it and gedit both, and I couldn’t agree more with Alex’s reasoning.
Doesn’t gedit’s MDI interface just fly in the face of the Gnome HIG and its spatial look and feel altogether ? (Or will tabs in nautilus be next ?)
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