The online auctioneer has announced a new web site to help developers build applications for eBay and PayPal.
Today, the company opened its Developers Conference in San Jose for eBay and PayPal developers. As the conference opens, developers will learn about a site called eBay Community Codebase, which has recently opened.
Members of the eBay Developers Program and PayPal Development Network will have access to source code for various tools and applications. The eBay Community Codebase hopes to encourage innovation and help developers build applications for both services.
As eBay wishes to encourage development by the open source community, it has changed the pricing structure for its Developers Program members. Individual tier members have had their certification fees waived, and can now make 10,000 API calls per month, which is up from 1,500.
“Open source development has been shown to greatly reduce both the time and cost
associated with developing software and also produce higher quality results due to the ability to continually improve and edit code,” said Greg Isaacs, director of eBay Developers Program.
“By creating the eBay Community Codebase and increasing the limit on free API access for our individual tier members, we hope to encourage new ideas and make developing with the eBay and PayPal APIs faster, easier and more cost effective for members of our Developers Program.”
Some initial projects included in the Codebase opening include a Firefox My eBay toolbar, a TiVo application, and several PayPal integration scripts. To provide version control and issue monitoring, eBay will work with CollabNet and host the eBay Community Codebase there.
Presently, eBay says it has 147 million registered users. The company hopes that new applications developed under the Codebase project will help developers access those users in new and profitable ways.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
