DISQUS

Actually, the 'official' Java library has been out-of-date for some time.

There's been an open source alternative that volunteers have maintained instead:

http://code.google.com/p/facebook-java-api/

Effectively, the open source version has been the one to use for some time, so this doesn't really change much.

Clearly, Facebook is aware of this and that's why they've stopped linking their own out-of-date version. Why they haven't explained the alternative is anyone's guess. They do like to keep their distance from the community... couldn't be seen to know about individual developers' efforts!

I wonder if they've demoted Gifts explicitly to 'level the playing field' between Facebook-owned and third-party apps? It was a bit 'unfair' that Gifts used to appear on the right-hand side when third-party apps can't make any use of that space.

Glad you find OpenSocket interesting. It's only really an academic exercise right now, and we're perfectly happy to respond to any concerns from Facebook or Google. For that reason, we have not released the source code for the time being.

If it's designed to 'say' anything to the big boys, it's only that the possibilities of techology will prevail in the end...! I'm sure all players are smart enough not to try to restrict their technology artificially for commercial reasons.

Our main driver at the moment is in ensuring the success of more generic open source projects. It is important that containers and apps are built consistently going forward. More details of these projects (under Apache most likely) will emerge soon!