APIs and Openness
When I was thinking about the Feedburner of APIs, the first thing I did was read the service level agreements (SLA) behind the service. I read hundreds of them. I wanted to know what features I needed, potential revenue streams, metrics, etc. More importantly, it was critical to understand how easily these APIs could be combined with others, or have additional services built on top of their platform. Some were more restrictive than others. The one common denominator between all of the SLAs is that you weren’t completely free to do whatever you wanted with the data. There was some degree of restriction.
When people say open, they are referring to a service that is less restrictive. Developers may never see a web service that lets them do anything they want. However, those that cultivate communal values rather than selfish ones will ultimately be more successful.
Edit: I have a spreadsheet of these APIs on a hard drive somewhere around here. I’ll try and find it at some point and post it.
Edit II: The ProgrammableWeb is by far the best API resource on the web. I’m not going to look for my spreadsheet— they have a more comprehensive list.
