
Did PayPal Just Clone Stripe’s API Documentation? - dwynings
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/did-paypal-just-clone-stripes-api-documentation/
======
pc
(I work at Stripe, and I'm the author of the tweet cited in the article.)

The visual design and structural layout of the documentation is certainly not
of Stripe's creation. That's all Jeremy Ashkenas. He gave us permission to
riff on it a few years ago.

I called their docs a clone on Twitter because of the original elements that
were copied: the language switcher along the top; sample curl invocations on
the right, with sample responses immediately afterwards; etc. Even the tiny
details, like the order of the sections and URLs themselves, are shockingly
similar: theirs now too live at /docs/api. The strangest detail, in my
opinion, is copying the motif of having a blueprint in the background on the
homepage.

The end result is that they're pretty much identical.

All of this is fine. This is just a set of arbitrary design decisions, and
they're absolutely free to copy them. We assert no ownership. But given how
arbitrary the design choices are, the fact that they picked all of the same
ones was somewhat surprising to us -- especially since there are many ways our
docs could be improved. (We hope to do so soon.)

~~~
wilfra
"(I work at Stripe, and I'm the author of the tweet cited in the article.)"

#humility

I would have gone for something like 'sup bitches this is Patrick Collison'.
Perhaps thats why I'm not the CEO of Stripe.

~~~
aszserda
Uh no, actually for him to NOT write what he did would make him a dick. So
what he wrote is really the only thing he could have said without coming
across and conceited and arrogant.

~~~
detst
You registered an account to make this statement? Writing "I'm one of Stripe's
cofounders", as he does in his profile, would not "make him a dick" but it is
interesting that he didn't do so here.

~~~
pc
Honestly, I just don't really like the self-aggrandizing ring of "I'm CEO and
cofounder". And I don't think it's particularly relevant most of the time.
Yes, I'm a cofounder, but the important part is that I work at
Stripe—alongside many others.

~~~
jdotjdot
Well said. I would up vote multiple times if I could.

The world needs more business leaders with that kind of humble, thoughtful,
and down-to-earth attitude and approach.

Compare PayPal's typically corporate cult of ego statement: "Under David's
leadership..."

~~~
yuhong
>Compare PayPal's typically corporate cult of ego statement: "Under David's
leadership..."

To be honest, I do wish such CEOs was more common.

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felix
Is this really news? That two sites have a vaguely similar layout for their
docs site? If they were actually identical sure that would suck - but it's
quite a stretch to call it a "clone".

The web has always been about getting inspiration from other sites on the web.
As long as it's not an obvious ripoff - this is how we move forward. Building
on what works. Let's worry about bigger problems.

~~~
socalnate1
Exactly right. This isn't news at all.

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minouye
The idea that the design similarities are a coincidence is just not believable
on any level. Anyone that has worked with PayPal or eBay API documentation
knows it's a complete disaster, and just happening to build new documentation
that similar to a competitor with best-in-class documentation seems
ridiculous.

If you want to see an example of some typical PayPal documentation, feel free
to peruse this 150 page pdf on adaptive payments:

[https://www.x.com/sites/default/files/2102_pp_adaptivepaymen...](https://www.x.com/sites/default/files/2102_pp_adaptivepayments.pdf)

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danielpal
Isnt this the default stylesheet of rocco? <http://rtomayko.github.com/rocco/>

Rocco is open-source.

~~~
richardjordan
Right. That's the first thing I thought as I was looking at that format for an
API I'm building myself (other options include things like Swagger). Point is
there are a bunch of formats and a lot of us use variants on what already
works. Nothing to see here.

~~~
joonix
Richardjordan, I'm posting this in response to your comment, way back:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5144288>

Would you be willing to email the list of links etc for learning Ruby that you
mentioned in that comment? Please send to info(at)tximmigration.com ...
thanks!

~~~
richardjordan
Hi... sure I'll email you - might not get to it till after the weekend of
kids' activities and family chores is over though :-)

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vinothgopi
They all use a document generator: <http://jashkenas.github.com/docco/> (MIT
License)

That is why they look so similar.

~~~
boucher
For what it's worth, we (Stripe) don't use docco. Though, the design was
repurposed with permission from @jashkenas.

I probably was not the first person to extend the idea of the side by side
layout to an API spec and example, but I had not seen anything like it when I
built the Stripe docs two years ago.

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brianr
They look similar design-wise, but both also look similar to Asana's API docs:
<http://developer.asana.com/documentation/> . It's just a nice way of laying
out documentation.

Looking through the PayPal docs quickly, they don't show any particular
similarity to Stripe, besides both being REST APIs for a payments platform.

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ricardobeat
This is stupid. These are run-of-the-mill websites using standard design
concepts none of them invented, they are barely similar.

Of course new, better products will inspire others to try to best them;
looking too similar is a sign that the competition is failing at that.

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hayksaakian
Are we going to get up in arms about copyright of _documentation_?

If anything its an improvement.

~~~
wilfra
There is no copyright claim here, the article says it's not illegal and they
are right. But if MySpace decided tomorrow they wanted to finally catch up to
Facebook and the result was a new site that was a near-exact replica of
Facebook, naturally people would call them out on that.

~~~
edouard1234567
I agree with you except for a few things :

1 - We are talking about an api documentation not a website used by 1B members
.

2 - The person who called them out works at stripe...

3 - The design we are talking about is far from being very unique to stripe
(today), except maybe for the blueprint.

If indeed paypal is copying stripe, it would have been more convincing
demonstrating this through a set of new features they allegedly copied from
stripe. That would have been more convincing and worth writing about.

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seany
If only they'd copy stripes customer service instead.

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misnome
It's a two-column documentation layout. Beyond that, it looks as similar as
any two documentation sets on the internet.

Non-story.

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andrewflnr
I would just like to point out that, in the wake of the Flat UI DMCA fiasco,
talking about things like this publicly was the recommended course of action,
as opposed to some sort of pathetic legal action. So that's what Patrick did.
He didn't himself seem to make that big a deal of it. So what are you
complaining about (those of you who are complaining)?

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Cherian
I've loved the django document generator[1] but it does not seem to adopted
widely. Is the side-by-side layout more appealing?

<https://readthedocs.org/>

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sciencerobot
This could be a good thing for developers who need to support multiple APIs.

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jasondenizac
um, how is this even a thing?

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john2x
I'm just glad they're trying to improve it.

