The biggest mistake web devs ever made was focusing on corporate-owned APIs instead of on new and innovative open protocols.
I don't care how all-encompassing Big Social becomes -- or whether Google or Apple can keep their market valuations ongoing.
Those "critical" APIs can be yoinked at any moment.
However, SMTP and HTTP have now been used for decades. So why not build on the next generation of open protocols?
Also, when Twitter yoinked API access from 3rd party developers, that convinced VCs that continuing a bait-and-switch with APIs was lucrative.
That they could fund the next potential monopoly.
The result was competing walled gardens -- and that has hindered the Internet's development, perhaps set it back for decades.
People often forget that a core selling point of Web 2.0 was interoperability.
Yay! You could embed! You could build plug-ins and themes!
But so much of it was a mirage because too much of Web 2.0 was built off corporate-owned APIs instead of open protocols.
@negative12dollarbill There are new protocols coming. You need them for your long term survival.
And sure, those corporate APIs worked over HTTPS, but that doesn't mean that you should build your company on someone else's APIs.
@atomicpoet thanks! and ActivityPub is the protocol which glues it all together?
@atomicpoet New player (microbloging/news aggregation) - https://kbin.pub :)
The main, English-speaking instance will be built soon...
@secretlyextrovert My concern isn't about whether or not Big Tech will adopt open protocols -- that should just be assumed.
My concern is about the long term viability of Internet tech, as well as the future long term success of a web dev's career.
Once a protocol is open, access can't be taken from you.
@atomicpoet in my personal experience, having something like “integrated with Twitter api to do XYZ” on your CV is going to hold more sway than “working with some bleeding edge protocol”.
I don’t think im getting you though. You say the protocol can’t be taken away - that’s not what companies are doing though? The likes of Twitter have deprecated access to the data…
@secretlyextrovert But I was around when Twitter pretty much did their big API yoink. Lots of colleagues lost their livelihoods over night.
I was one of the lucky ones in that the software I helped build was too popular to kill.
Furthermore, now that I've come out the other side, I don't care if you've integrated Twitter's API because I'm thinking about the future.
And to be completely frank, Twitter is not the future.
I'm not sure in these cases that it is so much the _software_ being sold, more that a service is being sold that makes use of the software (i.e. AWS using MariaDB in RDS etc.) where modifications and improvements are not ported back to the source tree.
@atomicpoet What makes a protocol open? Is it just longevity?
I can see an alternate timeline where Twitter adopted ActivityPub and then dropped support for it later and the end result would've been the same. Similarly, I can see one where another website came with a Twitter API compatibility and it wouldn't have made a dent.
It was Twitter's popularity gave it power, not the fact their API wasn't open.
@fstanis Sure, we've seen plenty of examples of embrace, extend, extinguish.
But even when a protocol like RSS is "extinguished", it still lives on to be nurtured by the next generation of developers.
Anyway, the alternate timeline you mention doesn't exist. Had it existed, developers would still have the ability to build on top of ActivityPub.
You forget one detail. It was 3rd party developers who built Twitter's popularity—not the other way around. Twitter didn't build its mobile clients.
@atomicpoet Was it really every up to webdevs?
Business incentives often will have large sway on what webdevs (as employees) will prioritise. So unless there's a business incentive to go with an open protocol it's likely not going to be priority among employed devs.
I'd love to see it, but the preference of large businesses to favour protocols that reinforce their own leverage is a predictable outcome.
@atomicpoet In the short term, it often looks like the open web is losing.
In the long run, however, we see over and over again that open standards and open protocols win. That's not to say there aren't emerging threats to come. But we can feel confident that the open web will remain resilient.
The correct solution is dismantling capitalism, the short term is a regulatory system requiring interoperability.
@SarahGiffrow I'm going to challenge you on this one because I work in this industry too. Corporate-owned APIs are what pay, but they're also a good reason for you to no longer be paid.
Open protocols allow *you* better options.
@atomicpoet I’d agree that it does offer more options in the long run. But, that future can feel impossibly far off when you need a way to cover your most basic needs right now.
There are certainly those who both do the paying job and contribute to open source, and then they’re faced with the problem of how to do both without burning themselves out.
Not saying it isn’t possible to do, by any means! But I also understand why some folks just take the easy paycheck.
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