APIs are increasingly the infrastructure of public and economic life, and that comes with responsibility. I believe API operations should weigh the interests of consumers, communities, and the public alongside their own, especially as APIs mediate more of how we live and work. Serving the public interest means being transparent, accountable, and honest about the power an API holds. I write constantly about the politics of APIs because these are not neutral pipes; they encode decisions about access, power, and fairness. Operations that take the public interest seriously build the kind of trust that regulation and backlash cannot easily shake. It is both the right thing to do and, increasingly, the smart thing to do.
APIs Serve the Public Interest
Policies
Open Standards Adopted
Require that APIs are defined and delivered using open standards such as OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema rather than proprietary formats. Open specifications lower the cost of adoption, enable i...
Data Portability Provided
Require that consumers can export their data from an API in a portable, standard format without friction or penalty. The data flowing through an API belongs to the people and organizations it descr...
Consumer Rights Honored
Require that an API honors the rights of its consumers and the people its data represents, including access, correction, portability, and deletion. As APIs become the infrastructure of public and e...
Experiences
Trust
Establish trust with API consumers will evolve and build over time, and is something that can be lost in a very short period of time. Trust will depend on other experiences like quality and reliabi...
Governance
Governance is the experience of keeping API operations consistent and aligned as they scale across teams and time. It is the discipline that connects strategy at the top to the rules being enforced...
Openness
Openness is the experience of an API built on open standards, open source, and transparent practices rather than proprietary walls. Open specifications, permissive licensing, and public tooling let...
