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

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

James Higginbotham

November 5, 2013 · 2 min read