[bcc][faked-from][mx] [development] social network module

[Mark Fredrickson]

>   Generally, buddy relationships are mutually and *consensually*  
> determined.

That really depends if you take the word "buddy" to mean friend. I  
think the buddylist.module might be better named "authorlist.module."  
It gives users an opportunity to track other contributors to the site  
("authors") and see what they have written.

In a practical sense, the need for mutually established relationships  
is only important if you want to control access: access to posts (see  
organic groups), access to profile information (see access control),  
etc.

FWIW - I think you might want to look into organic groups rather than  
buddylist. OG already has the framework to do access control.  
Buddylist does what it does well - I'd hate to see it cluttered.

Of course, if you're going to fork, choose whatever code you think  
you can use most easily. But before you go down that road, consider  
building a module on top of OG - I think you'll appreciate the work  
that has already been put into OG.

-Mark