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Scandal fans, rejoice--the crimson-hued nastiness between ConnectU and Facebook ain't over yet!

Court documents filed on Wednesday reveal that the founders of ConnectU, who claim that Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg pilfered their business plan and code, are touting new "smoking-gun" evidence against the 24-year-old billionaire.

Facebook settled ConnectU v. Facebook in April, but ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra say a search for related documents has produced some results.

Forensic expert Jeff Parmet was commissioned by ConnectU to trawl through Facebook hard drives after a court order opened them up for discovery in … Read more

I suppose it was too much to expect Facebook to adopt a permissive open-source license for its application platform. It's too bad, as it had the chance to forestall growth from Ning, Ringside, and other social networking upstarts by making competition impractical.

Instead, by choosing CPAL, Facebook has ensured that it can be open source without anyone actually using its source. Was that the intent?

As OStatic explains, CPAL requires display of an attribution notice on derivative works. This practice, which effectively requires downstream code to carry the original developer(s)' logo, came to be known as "badgeware." It was approved by the OSI but continues to be viewed with suspicion within the open-source community.

I've written before about how most open-source licenses don't apply themselves well to the networked economy. Only the OSL, AGPL, and CPAL contemplate web-based services. It's not surprising that Facebook opted for one of these licenses, but I am surprised it chose the one least likely to lead to developers actually modifying the Facebook platform.

If the point was to protect the Facebook platform from competition (i.e., derivative works), Facebook chose a good license. If it was to encourage development, it chose the wrong license.… Read more

As she lurched towards an unfortunate demise in the Democratic Primary election, Hillary Clinton sought out Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and appeared to blame him for her failure to defeat Barack Obama.

Last week, a Clinton campaign operative placed a phone call to Zuckerberg, choosing a less than optimal time of the morning. When Zuckerberg picked up, the New York Senator came on the line to firmly state her views.

"Mr. Zuckerberg. You and your friendsters- I believe that's the trendy term- are costing me the Presidency," declared the Senator.

"Um, we're Facebook, not Friendster, … Read more

This post was updated at 1:21 p.m. PDT with comment from Tim Kendall.

NEW YORK--It would've been cool: Facebook director of monetization Tim Kendall hinted Monday that the company would offer "a product" to help third-party companies "accelerate" participation in its developer platform when asked whether the company had any plans to start directly monetizing the technology.

Since no further detail was provided, and Kendall had said that this would deal with "whether an application is within Facebook or outside of Facebook," this reporter inferred that he'd meant something involving … Read more

This post was expanded at 12:00 PM PT.

Facebook announced Monday that it would be making a "significant part" of its developer platform open-source. The company called it "just a first step" in a release and said that developers will see open-source technology in "most of the code that runs Facebook Platform plus implementations of many of the most-used methods and tags." Most of it is licensed under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) and the rest under the Mozilla Public License (MPL).

It's called Facebook Open Platform, referred to in code … Read more

Facebook has made a number of changes to the behind-the-scenes workings of its developer platform, according to a blog post Monday by engineer Pete Bratach.

For the most part, the updates are geared toward two things: letting users keep tabs on spammy apps, and giving developers and app creators more insight into the people who are using their products.

This is a much bigger deal for the people creating and operating Facebook applications than for average users, but members will notice a few differences. Rather than "adding" applications, Facebook users will "log in" to them and … Read more

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his new COO Sheryl Sandberg fielded questions from Kara Swisher at the D6 conference. The pair stayed on message. Zuckerberg has learned to simply state the company goals in answer to almost any question. It shows focus and the savvy of a budding politician. Sandberg brought serious chops to the monetization and marketing discussion.

Kara asked Zuckerberg why he chose to be the CEO, even as the company has grown to 550 people. He sidestepped the question and talked about the company goals--helping people share information, building products, and creating teams.

Zuckerberg offered up that … Read more

The following is live coverage from D6 of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg being interviewed Wednesday by Kara Swisher:

Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.

Facebook might be hiring former Google employees left and right, but if current rumors are true, don't expect them to start instituting a free-food policy like Mountain View's any time soon.

Gossip blog Valleywag has reported for the past few days that Facebook is doing away with a $600 monthly housing subsidy offered to employees who opted to rent living space within proximity the company headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. The latest rumor says that new hires are losing their housing subsidy, and that existing employees will only keep it until they move to new houses or re-sign … Read more