Hey Yahoo, Can you please open source Delicious?

Google has open sourced: Jaiku, Etherpad, Wave among other things, before closing them down.

Open sourcing it wouldn't solve the discovery/hosting part, but I still think they should do it.

I'm sure it wouldn't be "easy," but it wouldn't be unprecedented.

Yahoo! folks also should take a look at dataliberation.org, for best practices on getting on data out (also a Google joint).

(Nope, I don't work for Google :D, just think they've done some good things in this space. )

I doubt we'll see it open sourced, or saved in any form by Yahoo. It's too much cost/effort for them, when that's the reason they're scrapping it in the first place.

What i'd like to see is people quickly rolling out tools that help us get our Delicious bookmarks into other sites easier. Eg into Google Bookmarks. That currently requires you to install the Google Toolbar and import them through that (ugh).

Since Yahoo! probably wants to avoid the embarrassment of seeing Delicious flourish under different management, they're unlikely to change course here.

But having >1,000,000 people with freshly tagged and exported links in a standard format seems to provide an opportunity to those who think they can do better.

One request for whoever that is: can you add the 'sort my links by popularity' feature that Yahoo! never developed?

The most valueable assets are its data and brand. I would be suprised if there weren't already similar open source services.

You know that could just be crazy enough to work. I'd certainly be interested in sitting down and considering architectures with you. I think the keys would be easy import from Delicious, making it friendly for non-geeks and getting the word out that it's the best alternative.