Jack @ ASP.NET

Another great project in codeplex: http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/

This toolkit is provided as a Facebook Client Library similar to Facebook’s PHP Client Library or Facebook’s JavaScript library. The goal is to enable .NET developers to quickly and easily leverage the various features of the Facebook Platform. This toolkit has evolved over time with input from the community and from Microsoft. The latest release (v3.0) includes new architectural improvements and provides an asynchronous interface for using the toolkit from Silverlight and from WPF.

The main entry point is the API (Facebook.Rest.Api) class in the Facebook.dll assembly. This class wraps the Facebook REST API and provides an easy to use interface for calling the different methods currently available in the Facebook API. We’ve also provided samples and tools for helping develop Facebook applications in the various .NET platforms including: ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF and WinForms. Additionally, we’ve provided all the source code for the API, components, controls, and samples for you to explore.

The toolkit is comprised of the following core assemblies:

• Facebook.dll: This is the main assembly that will be used by all applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications (Silverlight and WPF) to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier.
• Facebook.Silverlight.dll: This is the Silverlight version of the main assembly that will be used by all Silverlight applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier. The REST API in this assembly is Asynchronous only.
• Facebook.Web.dll: This assembly should be used by Canvas applications. The main functionality supported in this assembly is to encapsulate the handshake between the Facebook application and a canvas application (both FBML and IFrame)
• Facebook.Web.Mvc.dll: Provide a support building canvas applications using ASP.NET MVC. Separated from Facebook.Web.dll to avoid all developers from needing to install the MVC bits.
• Facebook.Winforms.dll: This assembly provides support for writing Facebook applications using Winform technology. This provides a Component that wraps the API to make it easier to use from Winforms. This also contains some user controls to help display Facebook data easily.

With some fanfare, the CodePlex Foundation launched itself late last week (codeplex.org).  This has generated quite a bit of discussion on blogs, twitter, email lists, podcasts, and everything else.

About the Copyright Assignment

One of the items on the CodePlex Foundation that is causing lots of concern is the sample license agreement that assigns copyright to the CodePlex Foundation. Here, I’m leaning heavily on my experience with publishers.

First of all, the only way you can assign copyright to another party is if it is yours. OK, that’s obvious, but I think lots of people are missing that. When I sign the contract for a book with a publisher, I do assign the copyright to the publisher (in return for some considerations). The publisher needs me to warrant that the work is *my original work*.  The same would be true for Open Source software projects. Hypothetically, for me to assign my OSS project’s copyright, I would have to assert that it’s my original work.

There is another way to assign copyright, which will be necessary for CodePlex and OSS to work. If you ask everyone that contributes to your OSS project to assign the copyright to the project (or you), you do hold the copyright, and therefore you can assign it. (The Apache Foundation Individual Contributor License Agreement contains language necessary to assign the copyright over.)

Note that you can (as the original author) grant a non-exclusive license as an alternative to assigning the copyright. That’s also common in many OSS contributor agreements. I’m not sure how much weight that gives in IP legal entanglements, but it seems to work for the Apache Foundation, and the MySQL organization. I’ll defer to others with more knowledge.