I never understand it when companies take this sort of unexpected and unilateral action. As long as no one is acting in bad faith, how hard is it to contact developers first and let them know what changes need to be made rather than simply deleting their accounts?
NodConcept's Chris Diskin, makers of the Emoti for
Facebook app, said he was contacted via e-mail on
Monday by Apple saying that Facebook believed his
app was infringing on their rights. They provided
him with contact info at Facebook and said he had
five days to resolve the issue.
Diskin told CNET that he immediately called Facebook
and was told they would get back to him to explain
the issue. They never contacted him, instead choosing
to delete his developer credentials from the system.
They bothered to give him time to fix a problem that they didn't bother to specify. When he asked them for specifics, they blew him off.
With Apple, at least you can blame it on Steve Jobs' overinflated ego. With Facebook, it is most likely some middle-tier lawyer "just doing his job." That seems to have been the case with IBM and TurboHercules.
That said, as we move to more "cloud-oriented" platforms, we are most likely going to see more and more of these types of issues. And suddenly, regardless of how open the platform that you are running on locally is, all of your data and applications are living in a world that is locked-down and has arbitrarily-enforced rules and regulations. My only hope is that open platforms "win" in the end..
When you are a big company it takes a conscious effort not to be a dick by trampling the little guy. And this culture has to be set from the top. Given Facebook's history, being nice to the little guy has never been a high priority, so I'm not surprised with this incident either.
Doesn't Facebook benefit dramatically from all these apps? Hundreds of free developers filling use-case niches and giving end-users more reasons to connect with the Facebook platform. All blown to smithereens over a too-hasty decision to fire first and ask for fixes later.
