API Voice:

• Implementation Of An API Design Should Never Require Permission From The API Designer
• Separating The Layers Of The API Operations Onion While Thinking About API Copyright

Those two posts by API Evangelist (another of his sites) Kin Lane extract bits of my long post on these and related matters, as discussed at API Con. I’m happy that even one person obtained such clear takeaways from reading my post or attending the panel.

Quick followups on Lane’s posts:

• I failed to mention that never requiring permission to implement an API must include not needing permission to reverse engineer or discover an undocumented API. I do not know whether this implies in the context of web service APIs has been thoroughly explored.
• Lane mentions a layer that I missed: the data model or schema. Or models, including for inputs and outputs of the API, and of whatever underlying data it is providing access to. These may fall out of other layers, or may be specified independently.
• I reiterate my recommendation of the Apache License 2.0 as currently the best license for API specifications. But I really don’t want to argue with pushing CC0, which has great expressive value even if it isn’t absolutely perfect for the purpose (explicit non-licensing of patents).