

Face.com closes its API after Facebook purchase - alsothings
http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2012/07/10/face-com-facebook.php

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ColinWright
Related (or identical):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4211021> <\- Comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4211271> <\- Comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4212427>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4212488>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4223137>

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alsothings
The interesting point here to me is, is there _any_ obligation for service
continuity across an acquisition? Any at all?

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mc32
Moral obligation or legal obligation? Legally they would be bound by whatever
terms you and they agreed upon such that they are enforceable. Morally? I
dunno, that's trickier, but at inception, one surely can't account for all
possible future scenarios (acquisition being one) and build that into people's
expectations.

I think it's just the nature of business. Even with the best of intentions, a
company (site whatever) may not be able to survive (and most people accept
that). In the case of failure a mature business can go through bankruptcy
proceedings. Still, in most cases, customers are probably the last ones
receiving any comp, if any is left. Mostly it goes to creditors and so on.

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josscrowcroft
Seems like such a perfect opportunity for competitors to step up.

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methodin
According to the recent rulings you can't copyright APIs, and if that's the
case, why have their not been more open source API alternatives to these
ventures? I understand money would be an issue so I imagine a non-profit or
open source foundation funding servers to house such a venture would also be
necessary unless you were to do it yourself.

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SoftwareMaven
The APIs aren't hard, the technology _behind_ the APIs are.

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AUmrysh
That's the real problem. You can find stuff like libfacerec out there, which
OpenCV just added to their latest release (2.4.2) a week or so ago. Maybe we
will see more face-recognizing software come from this.

[http://docs.opencv.org/modules/contrib/doc/facerec/index.htm...](http://docs.opencv.org/modules/contrib/doc/facerec/index.html)

