

Are API’s the New Open Source? - genieyclo
http://www.newcommbiz.com/are-apis-the-new-open-source/
It’s amazing to me the amount of innovation brought on by comapnies opening API’s for developers to tap into. Everything from allowing 3rd party applications to run within your site to API’s that let developers pull all your data and do cool things with it.<p>It reminds me of the whole Open Source movement, but better. I love Open Source. I use it everyday in my life but if I had to choose between getting a companies source code versus getting that companies data? I’d choose data any day.
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makecheck
I think what we see these days is confusion, where APIs are trying to take
over what has traditionally been handled by _protocols_ and _file formats_.

I prefer that APIs actually _do_ things, such as calculations, or composite
actions that would be awkward to perform individually. (Yes, APIs _can_ exist
primarily to expose data, too; but I think APIs that do this are wasting time
in unnecessary encapsulation; all they really need to do is something simple,
like returning the URL of data in a certain format.)

If I am looking for only data, it should have a (preferably popular) format,
optionally with a protocol to access it using whatever network and/or
database. This opens you up to multiple implementations, too: so if it turns
out that Social Networking Site Du Jour's API isn't _actually_ the most
efficient way to do X, you might find an alternative Y that is better, but
_could use the same data_.

APIs are also not good for data for the same reason that APIs can be a problem
for code: instability. You can't be sure what languages will remain supported,
and when things will change. You have to wait for an API to do X, even if it
might have been possible given the "raw" data. And ultimately, a company could
go out of business and leave your API unusable, whereas actual data can be
copied to avoid this, and cached for performance.

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WeslyMichel
I agree. From a startup standpoint we are able to decrease a lot of expenses
by simply utilizing public API's. The advantages of open source code for
companies meant that you didn't have to go out and purchase software. We are
seeing the same thing with API's. The only problem I see with this trend is
the dependency of those API's. With open source software such as PHP & MYSQL
once I have it installed, I own it, where API's are real time dependency i.e
twitter going down, will cause twitter dependent applications to go down as
well. As as a developer myself the value proposition is that the data is also
available with the API.

