#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