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Ok, let's say I design and run a simple service that publishes stock market data and I expose the data using a REST API. If someone decides to use the service,
by quonn 11y ago
Ok, let's say I design and run a simple service that publishes stock market data and I expose the data using a REST API. If someone decides to use the service, you might argue there are multiple parties involved. But really, they are just using my service if they like it, otherwise they don't. There is not politics, power (I don't have any, except over a service I run on my own server) and money (The service is free) involved, if we want the terms to mean anything.
Sure, I get to make all the decisions, but if we now call every decision anyone ever takes political, the term looses all its meaning. Also note that those decisions are not limited to API at all: The implementation is just as political (e.g. availability, performance, privacy).
So it turns out that APIs and protocols (conflated in the article) and the implementation and - if it's a service - any other rule or practise affecting it can have political aspects, just like any other product or service or thing.
- h_r 11y agoThis is what I was thinking and I must have been thinking about it a lot longer before hitting the reply button because I believe I said almost the same thing. I just wanted to mention that I wouldn't have posted my reply if yours was here when I started composing it.
- rumcajz 11y agoFirst answer this question: Why are you running the service? Respect? Trying to establish a lock in? Then aswer the second question: Are you getting it? Do people respect you? Or do they ignore your service? Does the lock in happen? No? Then there's something wrong with the service. So let's have look at what our users want. Oh, it seems they have agendas of their own. So maybe if we tweaked the API a bit...
- quonn 11y ago> Why are you running the service? Respect? Trying to establish a lock in? Maybe I hacked it together on a rainy weekend.
- rumcajz 11y ago> Maybe I hacked it together on a rainy weekend. But why are you running it? What are your incentives? This is what I was writing about. Programmers, for some unknown reason, try very hard not to express their political interests and try to disguise them using technical lingo.