Hi,
I didn't intend to imply (though I did seem to) that APIs are a silver
bullet that would have totally solved this situation.
My observation comes from a few things I've been doing recently; including
projects with RSS aggregation (RSS and ATOM could be thought of as
rudimentary APIs), but especially with Twitter. I have a number of
side-projects that use the Twitter API to wholesale copy groups of tweets to
my local repository. Should Twitter ever disappear, the content of these
tweets would still 'exist' (I could make them available again).
To re-iterate, I don't mean to say that APIs would have (or will)
automatically and totally solve this dilemma. But if the content is valued
by people while a service exists, it is likely that people will want to
re-use it, and an API gives them the opportunity to do so (and with the
right features and licensing, the ability to replicate and/or store the
content).
Dan
On 08/05/2009 16:33, "Waibel,Guenter" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Sorry for the diversion, but I can't resist making this observation.
>
> Dan, most API's don't allow you to take possession of the content. (While
> theoretically they could, in practice, they don't.) That means the content
> itself can't be replicated in another location without the original system.
> That being the case, how would an API have solved the problem of long-term
> sustainability of this content? Support for the API would have disappeared
> along with the support for the project.
>
> Am I missing something?
>
> Günter
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