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My point is that having a public accessible API or docs are no longer enough, you need to adopt open standards whenever possible. Adopting open standards ensure
by benburkert 17y ago
My point is that having a public accessible API or docs are no longer enough, you need to adopt open standards whenever possible. Adopting open standards ensures that the end user is free and able to move their data in and out of your service. One of the ways Microsoft torpedoes open standards is by adding creative extensions to them, so while 95% of your data is contained in an open format, it's not portable b/c the extension makes it unusable to services adhering to only the standard.
It's using XMPP vs. rolling your own chat protocol. Supporting oAuth for file access vs. a custom authentication API.
Everything I saw browsing through the docs is about how to develop for the unite platform. I don't see anything about interacting with a unite service outside of an opera browser.
In this sense, unite is a creative extension to an open standard, browsers with common functionality like firefox, ie, safari, etc.
- jimboyoungblood 17y agoFollowing this line of reasoning, Twitter is horrible because it doesn't adopt an open standard. Likewise Flickr. And delicious. And anything else with a homegrown REST API. If their API is well documented, who cares that it wasn't designed and rubber stamped by a committee.
- factoryjoe 17y agoI think if Opera provided an explanation of how to set up a "Unite server" on your own server, than a lot of this controversy would be moot. That's why Google was so epic with their launch of Wave.
- Raphael 17y agoWhat kind of explanation are you looking for? You just download Opera, change a few settings, and leave it running.
- benburkert 17y agoTwitter has adopted open standards, they use oAuth. There's nothing wrong with home grown APIs, but I think APIs that ignore open standards will be a problem as services become increasingly interdependent.