API Evangelist just became a financial contributor to OpenLint on Open Collective, with a €1,000 contribution. I want to explain why, and ask you to do the same if your work depends on API linting.
Why we put money in
I’ve written about why I forked Spectral and why it became OpenLint. The short version: Spectral’s ruleset format quietly became how governments, banks and companies write down their API design rules, it was never specified, and it depended on one vendor’s priorities. OpenLint is the community fork turning that work into a formal, vendor-neutral standard, with a draft specification, a reference toolbox, and weekly office hours that are open, recorded and transcribed.
API Evangelist depends on this work every day. Linting is how I check the contracts in the APIs.io catalog, how I talk to companies about governance, and how I measure what providers say against what they publish. If the rules format that all of that runs on is going to be a shared standard, then the people who rely on it should help pay for it. So we are.
I’ve also been asking companies that depend on OpenAPI, Arazzo and Overlays to become members of the OpenAPI Initiative. It would be hard to keep making that argument if I weren’t doing the same thing myself for the project I’m helping to lead.
What the money is for
OpenLint’s home is Open Source Europe, which acts as its fiscal host, so contributions are held and spent in the open. The money supports the project’s operations and the work on its projects:
- Maintainers. The specification and the toolbox move forward because people give them their time. Funding lets the project pay for some of that time instead of relying entirely on goodwill.
- Meetings and community. Office hours, recordings, transcripts and the infrastructure that keeps the work public.
- Grant writing. There is real public money for open infrastructure like this, especially in Europe, where much of the demand for API linting comes from public institutions enforcing national API design rules. Writing good grant applications takes time. A modest amount of contributed money makes it possible to go after much larger grants that fund the specification, the conformance suite and the tooling properly.
Every euro is visible on the collective’s page, so you can see where it went.
Become a contributor
If your organization publishes API design rules, runs Spectral rulesets in CI, builds tooling that imports them, or sells a product that depends on them, you depend on this work. Here’s how you can help:
- Contribute on Open Collective. A one-time or recurring contribution, at whatever level makes sense for you. Organizations and individuals are both welcome.
- Show up. Come to the office hours, open a discussion, review the specification, or pick up an issue in the community repository.
- Tell us what you use. If you depend on Spectral rulesets, let us know how. It helps the defaults reflect the real world, and it strengthens every grant application we write.
I’d much rather the API linting standard be paid for by the people who use it than by any one company. API Evangelist is in. I hope you’ll join us.
