We're entering a new era of interconnectedness, in which everything from cars to coffee makers to heart rate monitors can connect to web applications -- or each other. Meanwhile, the open source movement, cloud services, and web standards have made it easier to create new applications and even hardware that we add to this worldwide network.
But all this was threatened in 2010 when Oracle sued Google, accusing the company of copying several parts of the Java programming language and platform. The scariest part was the accusation that Google had violated Oracle's copyrights in mimicking the Java application programming interfaces, or APIs. APIs -- guidelines for how an application interacts with other software and services -- are the thing that tie everything together in the web world, and very often, developers will copy and use APIs created by someone else. Oracle suit made so many people wonder if they would be sued too.
Last year, the courts decided that the Java API wasn't actually subject to copyright. Judge William Alsup compared the Java API to a bookshelf -- a place to find the information you want. But Oracle has appealed, and many are worried that these legal issues will crop but again, including Kin Lane, one of the researchers recruited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to weigh in on the Oracle vs. Google case.
To solve this problem, Lane has teamed up with API management provider 3Scale to create API Commons, a site for sharing and finding APIs that can be reused without worrying about legal ramifications. "We want to give people a way to say: 'Hey, I made a good API, you should use it,'" Lane explains.
Some of the APIs described in API Commons so far include simple APIs for listing things like jobs, events, and businesses. Those sharing API designs on API Commons don't need to share their code, but Lane says some companies may still be hesitant to share their APIs if they believe the APIs constitute a competitive advantage. He compares sharing APIs to open source software. At first, companies balked at the idea of publishing their code, but now, many have realized that there are many benefits.
Lane says the API Commons could also provide a way to preserve good ideas. If a company commits its API to the commons, and then goes out of business or is acquired and shut down by another company, its API can live on.
Another key goal of the site is determining standards and best practices for APIs. "We want to create one place where the best API wins," Lane says. Developers can rate and comment on the APIs in the site. Ultimately, different industries, such as health care providers or financial institution, could settle on standards. "APIs are a good thing, and we want more of them," says 3Scale CEO Steven Willmott. "But when it gets up to into the million, and each API is a little different, then we run into trouble."
API Commons is built on top of the code sharing and collaboration site GitHub. That makes it easy to "fork" APIs -- i.e. create your own custom versions of what you find on API Commons. That even extends to the API Commons itself. "Someone could take the API Commons and fork it," says Lane, "and create their own API Commons."
