Open APIs

Open APIs

Posted Jul 7, 2012 11:20 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
Parent article: Total bankers: Twitter and LinkedIn's cynical API play (The Register)

Perhaps we need an Open Source Definition for APIs and platforms, generally, much like we have for open-source software.

This part is very interesting. Users of an API cannot force the publisher to do anything, since it is the publisher's code; but a publisher wishing to show an "Open API" badge might consider respecting some requirements. The practical problems seem to me even worse than in the Open Source case...

Of course, publishers like Twitter would rapidly say: "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!" and ignore this definition. But perhaps their reputation might be tarnished by that... After all, Facebook and other web 2.0 poster children have released a lot of code as open source, without need.

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