Yahoo Mail, the world’s most popular consumer e-mail program is looking for outsider programmers to develop new applications for use with the service. With 257 million subscribers, this move represents the biggest open source software project in history.
According to Chad Dickerson, head of Yahoo’s software developer relations program,”Yahoo is a very large company but we can’t build every application that a user might want. You can imagine tens of thousands of niche applications (springing) from Yahoo Mail.”
The code will be made available to the public by the end of the year.
Although I have long since moved on to the Gmail platform, I applaud Yahoo’s effort to tap outsider programmers for e-mail applications. Opening up the code to the public creates an endless supply of fresh ideas, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it. I may even have to fire up my old address to try everything out.
