My friend Jason (JSON) Harmon said something very profound about the API governance rules space](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7306387751614988288/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7306387751614988288%2C7306681446256033792)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7306681446256033792%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7306387751614988288)&dashReplyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7306760848339787776%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7306387751614988288)&replyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7306387751614988288%2C7306760848339787776)), which I think also applies to the world of API specifications—that, “it’s both a silent and noisy space.” I just touched on this with my story about the backwards OpenAPI world we live in, but I think it is something wider than just OpenAPI as Jason points out with Spectral rules. If you’ve worked publicly in the OpenAPI, OpenAPI, JSON Schema, or Spectral rules space for any amount of time you’ve experienced what Jason means by it being a silent and noisy space, which my definition may vary from Jason’s, but I feel is made up of the following.
- Knowledge - People are in desperate need of knowledge that will help them stay afloat in their chaotic API landscape and will consume anything you publish.
- Artifacts - People are in need of complete and accurate artifacts that describe the surface area of their APIs and API operations they don’t understand at all.
- Intellectual Property - People rightly see API artifacts as intellectual property but because they don’t understand the nuance treat everything as valuable IP.
- Feudalism - Because enterprises are often such highly competitive and cutthroat environments not sharing knowledge and artifacts is seen as normal behavior.
- Financialization - With data being the new oil, startups take a very extractive approach to how they provide services and tooling, which limits any sharing.
All of this equates into a very noisy space, but not with people talking, sharing, and making pull requests. People are downloading. People are consuming. If you are producing any knowledge or artifacts that are relevant to API operations and governance people are there to consume it. That is the noise. There is a huge appetite for this stuff. However, the silence is people contributing to that knowledge and those artifacts. It rarely occurs. As Jason points out, enterprises want access to the OpenAPIs and JSON Schema for the APIs they consume, and they want to cherry pick and curate the Spectral rules they need to govern their APIs as they see fit for their industries and enterprises. Very few want to share those publicly. This is something that will become even more evident in the silence and noise around Arazzo—you just wait.
