I find myself reliving the anxiety from March of 2015 to October 2015 to November of 2015 regarding the behind the scenes negotiations to get Swagger put into the Linux Foundation on API Evangelist. API Evangelist was much more diplomatic and obsequious back then, but a decade later we are much more outspoken and direct. So let’s cut to the chase. SmartBear would you please put Spectral into the OpenAPI initiative alongside OpenAPI, Arazzo, and Overlay specifications? Like Reverb, your acquisition of Stoplight has shifted some very important open-source intellectual property from which the API community has invested in over the years, and donating to the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) would demonstrate that you are truly committed to contributing value to the space and not just extracting.
Spectral is barely a standard in the first place. It is more of a configuration file for the Spectral CLI which reflects the technical needs of API governance in service of API design governance. However, since Stoplight ingested Speccy back in August of 2018 and produced Spectral, many of us in the space have begun to build around the Spectral rules format as if it was a specification. There are numerous service and tooling providers who have built around the standard, and most notably Dave Shanley has embraced the Spectral rules format as a specification in a faster and more modern implementation called Vacuum. I think we can all agree that Spectral is an important standard that has been elevated above Stoplight or SmartBear, and like you did with Swagger, it is time for you to donate it to the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI). I can’t speak for the entire API community, but I can say that I will be forever grateful for your contribution.
