I have an exciting announcement today.
I am releasing the source code for PhotoBook.
As you may know, PhotoBook is a Facebook photo browser for Mac.
All code is being released under the MIT license (guess why 
). Unlike the GPL, this license allows for a lot of flexibility with what can be done with the code.
Visit the Google Code project page for more details and to download the source.
I have two main goals in doing this:
- First, PhotoBook is freeware and I don’t have a particularly strong reason as to why I should hold onto the source. By releasing it into the wild, I hope other Cocoa developers will find some use for it in their own projects. The license allows pieces of code to be used in other applications (free or for profit) with few restrictions. It is a small thank you for all the other open source code I use and love.
- Second, I hope this will help foster faster development. There has not been a new release in nearly seven months due to school and other projects. I know the time I will be able to spend working on PhotoBook will decrease even more next year. So, by making it a community based project, others will be able to help fix bugs, add new features, etc. I have already been in contact with one developer working on an amazing, revolutionary feature that you have never seen before in a photo application.
If you are interested in joining the project, checkout the code. Post patches on the Google Code page, or send me an email (adam [at] [this domain].com), and I’ll add you as a developer so you can make commits.
I should note that I did not originally plan to release the source to PhotoBook, so it is not as commented and such as I would like, and some features are implemented in special (read:lazy) ways. I will work on this soon.
The code currently in the repository is basically the 1.1 source with a few bug fixes.
If the project takes hold, it should be really exciting. I welcome any feedback.
Also, look for some more open source announcements in the near future.
Responses to “PhotoBook Has Gone Open Source!”
March 17th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Can you please add a filter feature to look for photos of tagged people? …specifically I’d like to find all pictures of me (though maybe others someday too) …so I can import them into my iPhoto. This is a key feature..basically I’m asking to improve search functionality to search more than just album titles.
April 15th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Tried installing this and got this error:
There was a problem communicating with facebook. Please ensure that you are online and try again. If that does not work, facebook may be experiencing problems right now, so try again later.
Could not communicate with Facebook.
Error: Your statement is not indexable - the WHERE clause must contain one of the columns marked with a star in http://developers.facebook.com/documentation.php?doc=fql in -[AppController didLoadCoverPhotoData:]
Strange because it’s checking the UN and pw, but not letting me in.
Any ideas?
April 29th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Hi, great App. The one thing I really miss - since I personally don’t use iPhoto - is to drag and drop pictures and albums to folders for local backup. Wouldn’t that be easy to implement?
I don’t know cocoa and all the macos specifics, otherwise I would give it a shot. Thanks again for that nice piece of software.
May 17th, 2009 at 7:53 am
hey, well done on PhotoBook. Aside from it being a bit slow, great UI, great value.
Has anyone done the same for Flickr ?
July 20th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Great application, except for some reason it shows that I have No Albums when I sign into facebook with this application. Has anyone else had this error or do you know of a fix?
September 8th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
What ever happened to “Google Importer” for Leopard. Is it dead because I really want it, even if it doesn’t have all the new features.