#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow

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Towards an API Commons – Steven Wilmott, 3Scale and Kin Lane, Presidential Innovation Fellow

The number of APIs are exploding
Need client code to help interact with the APIs
- Code generation – doesn’t always work well
- Intelligent clients (e.g. Hypermedia) – can take a long time to do right
- API copyright is a legal grey area
- Will require lots of client code to connect to the multitude of APIs
Can we use open source and creative commons to build an API commons?
Enable API definitions and patterns to be openly shared and marked as reusable
Single interface, multiple implementations
Goals: Implement, consume, improve, and remix
Benefits: broader adoption, shared tooling, feedback, community driven standardization, save work, clear copyright footing
No control – push them “somewhere”, perhaps Github for forking by others
Sharing APIs can reduce the overall number of clients required
Commercial use of APIs can be a competitive advantage, but may also help set the standard
Creative Commons may help deal with copyright issues for new APIs
The site allows for awareness, discovery, tracking, and promotion
Adoption will take time and it may not make sense today for everybody
Over time they believe that it will become a popular choice
Website: http://apicommons.org

Driving API Team Collaboration with Blackbird