[wos] Open API panel

[Janko Roettgers]

I brought up the idea of anOpen API panel at WOS before -
now the topic just became a  lot more relevant:

ttp://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/api_keys_for_direct_competitor.html

API Keys for Direct Competitors Permalink
By marc on June 17, 2006

In a FlickrCentral discussion thread about Picasa Web Album, Google's
new photo hosting service, Stewart Butterfield from Flickr says
something very interesting about whether Flickr would, or should, give
a direct competitor a Flickr API key for the purpose of moving a
Flickr user's data to that competitor's service:

    "[T]his is something that we've never had any set policy on and
this thread has sparked a lot of internal debate on the team: some
people felt that it was unreasonable, some people felt like it didn't
matter since Flickr should win on the basis of being the best thing
out there.

    I actually had a change of heart and was convinced by Eric's
position that we definitely should approve requests from direct
competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need
to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access.

    The reasoning here is partly just that "fair's fair' and more
subtly, like a GPL license, it enforces user freedom down the chain. I
think we'll take this approach (still discussing it internally)."

I love this, and would love to see this idea discussed more and more
broadly. The discussion seems to me to overlap directly with this
(long but very worthwhile) exchange between Mark Pilgrim and John
Gruber: When the bough breaks, And Oranges, and Juggling oranges. Mark
and John are talking about desktop applications, and Stewart and his
interlocutor, Thomas Hawk, are talking about web applications, but
that's where the differences end. In both conversations, they're
talking about freedom and ownership of data (a topic on which you
should expect to see me write much more, very soon).

There are license lawyers who will jump all over this with a GPL
derivative, and given the success of the GPL at promoting its core
ideas, there is some place for that. But at start, the discussion of
data freedom and ownership should continue. It's important. Eric's API
Parity solution is a great one.

-- 
          Janko Roettgers
Journalist - Los Angeles
roettgers at lowpass.cc
janko.roettgers at web.de
http://www.lowpass.cc