Interview: MSNBC.com Likely Will Add EveryBlock Feeds To Its Local Section In ‘Next Few Months’

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Interview: MSNBC.com Likely Will Add EveryBlock Feeds To Its Local Section In ‘Next Few Months’

One question in the wake of MSNBC Interactive’s purchase of EveryBlock is how MSNBC.com will integrate EveryBlock’s hyperlocal news feeds. In an interview, MSNBC.com president Charles Tillinghast tells us that EveryBlock feeds will be added to the local news section of MSNBC.com “probably in the next few months.” (That should add some unique content to a section of the MSNBC site that in its current state mostly links away to various local news sources).

At the same time, EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty (pictured above) says his site will continue to expand on its own—adding both cities and data sets, along with other features. Other highlights from the interview:

—The future of the code: EveryBlock’s platform is open source, meaning it can potentially be replicated by competing sites. But Holovaty and Tillinghast say that others will only have access to the code as it existed on June 30—when it was initially released—meaning MSNBC.com will likely have an edge over any competitors. “What happens after that we’re not obligated to make that open source,” Holovaty says, adding that so far only a handful of sites have actually adopted the code.

—Deal terms: The Knight Foundation funded EveryBlock via its Knight News Challenge program but the foundation did not have equity in the startup. “Basically the grant was paying for development of the open source code and we fulfilled the obligation,” Holovaty says. Asked whether he was now considering returning some money to the group, Holovaty says he is “planning on pointing everyone I know to the News Challenge. That’s what they’ve asked me to do.” As for other potential acquirers, Holovaty would only say he talked to a “bunch of people.” He wouldn’t say if any newspaper companies had been interested.

—The hyperlocal market: With Patch Media and now EveryBlock bought up, who might be next? Holovaty says he is not impressed with other online hyperlocal startups, saying most are simply replicating what newspapers were doing in print. “What we found exciting about EveryBlock was that they were providing content that never existed on a local level before,” Tillinghast says.

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Joseph Tartakoff

@josephtartakoff Aug 17, 2009 6:10 PM ET

Photo: Flickr

Posted In: Advertising, Local, Media & Publishing, Online News, Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions, Companies, Microsoft, MSNBC

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Jim Owen

" always ethically tainted " - lol

Joe Germuska

@M.B.M. re "future releases of Everyblockâs code"—there is no reason to expect that there will ever be a future release of Everyblock's code in the sense described by the GPL.

The EveryBlock iPhone application is a software release in GPL terms. The EveryBlock web application is not, even if there is an update which offers new features.

M.B.M.

I'm not sure there's a way to talk around what C.W. Anderson has found. Its right there in the linked portion of the GPL - "To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted."

That seems quite strong - "always ethically tainted".

In this case, after the purchase future releases of Everyblock's code will now not be in the public domain, but will be owned by Microsoft.

Better legal minds than mine can figure out if this violates the letter of the agreement, but it definitely seems to violate the spirit.

Paul Baron

Being one of those "other startups", we at Hometowntimes.com find these acquisitions quite interesting. We already have a successful business model/platform that is currently operating in 524 cities across the US - with a business model that enlists local stakeholders versus the "scraping and aggregation" of readily available and much duplicated non-original content. All from sources with the hyper local level <100K, finding its audience, readership, and delivering real local content of value from local editors/publishers and original content sources. We are capable of ramping up our services to far more local communities in virtually no time at all. Happy to talk to any media companies who want to learn more about our model and approach.

anon

Dear Chris,

Excellent question. BSD might have been better. (Interestingly, I believe another well-known Holovaty project, Django, was released under BSD.) I wonder who made the decision to use the GPL, and how carefully they thought about this?

It's also possible that the goals and intentions of the Knight folks changed a bit over the past few years, which I think could happen without dishonesty.

Joe Germuska

Frankly, the relevance of the GPL to a code base which is intended to run software-as-a-service seems unclear. Since the GPL's constraints are mostly tied to "distribution," it seems that one could probably build up a business around a proprietary fork of EveryBlock, if one were so inclined.

IANAL, YMMV, etc…

C.W. Anderson

Dear Anon,

Then why would Knight (and Adrian) make it the initial release under a GPL license? Why not just make it a BSD and be more honest about ultimate uses and intentions?

Chris

anon

C.W.,

First, the FAQ you point to makes it clear that the developers can do whatever they want with their code. The GPL only puts conditions on *other* people's usage.

Second, on the question of ethics: in reading that FAQ, remember that its authors view *any* closed-source project as unethical. From that standpoint, yes, not releasing source code is bad. But not everyone shares that black-and-white view of the world.

Let's do a thought experiment. It's entirely possible that the only way to fund continued work on Everyblock and future follow-on projects is for a corporation to sponsor them as proprietary development. Would it be worth abandoning Adrian's wonderful, pro-social line of work just to avoid proprietary development?

Now, I just made up this trade-off example. For all I know MSNBC will keep releasing source code.The point I'd like to make, though, is that the complexity of real-world ethics isn't captured by that FAQ. I'd add that Adrian has contributed a vast amount to the open-source community; frankly, if he never donates another line of code, he's already done far more than most people.

C.W. Anderson

Adrian,

My understanding of GPL3 and Creative Commons licensing (as opposed to the BSD license, for instance) is that, at the very least, it is highly highly unethical to only release the initial version of software as Open Source while reserving the rights to all other versions as "unfree," and that this violates the spirit, and possibly the letter, of the GPL istelf.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ReleaseUnderGPLAndNF

Indeed, the whole point of the GPL (again, as opposed to the BSD) is to keep open source projects from being captured by proprietary software and media companies—for common labor to be re-annexed, as it were.

Any response?