API Strategist

1 minute read

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

Full slide deck available on Slideshare

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