Oracle has purchased API design provider Apiary. I'm a big fan of what Apiary does, and what the team has accomplished. I don't trade in Silicon Valley currency, so I'm not going to congratulate the team on their exit. For me, it is just a reminder of how we can't have anything nice in the space. No matter how good your team is, or how good your product or services are, the thousand pound gorillas will always come in the room and fuck things up.
I am bummed about the acquisition of Apiary because they are essential to my API design origin story. Jakub, Z, and the Apiary team made API definitions to be more about API design than just API documentation. Pushing the conversation earlier on in the API lifecycle, opening up the concept that API definitions could be used for not just documenting your APIs after they are live, and all about design early on in the process, something that opened up for use across every stop along the API life cycle. This resulted in API definitions being core to mocking, deployment, management, SDKs, testing, monitoring, and much, much more. #thankyou
Apiary was something I was proud to support in the API sector--Oracle is not. The negative mark this company has left in the space far outweighs anything good they could possibly do through acquisitions or any new solutions. With this post, I will get the usual waves of people telling me this is "just business", which is code for how people fuck each other over under their capitalist religion. So, go ahead and tell me how I live in a fantasy world, when in reality it is you who live in a fantasy world where it isn't about producing a good product, or service, it is just about your love of money, quest to be rich, and your willingness to allow for good things (and people) to be screwed over along the way.
Over the last decade, I've often been pretty naive about how money works, allowing myself to get overly excited about good people, products, interesting technology, and tooling. You won't find me making these mistakes in the future, even if I have to be a grumpy fucker to new startups that come along. I hate being in the business of telling energetic young startup founders of the realities of the world, throwing a wet blanket on their enthusiasm, but when I do jump on a call with new entrants I will be reminding them of the realities of how all of this works, and that at some point they will be fucking over their end-users and developers--it's just business.
I will be rewriting my history of APIs and will be removing emphasis on Apiary's role in the API design world. Isn't this what white dudes do? It is why it's called "his"-story. The impact they made will remain, and I will always be thankful for, but I'll be damned if I give Oracle any traffic and exposure in my research. Another sad day for the API space, leaving me believing more and more in my Tech Gypsy philosophy that there is no way to have anything nice in the world of technology, and that we will all just have to learn how to survive in the cracks, because power will always creep in and ruin the platforms that we love. :-( ;-( ;-(
Fuck You Oracle!!! - Kin Lane, the API Evangelist.
