The OpenAPI Initiative has a new member! We are pleased to welcome GitBook to the OpenAPI family. GitBook provides tools for building great documentation that developers love, and leverages the OpenAPI Specification in the documentation pipeline. OpenAPI descriptions can be automatically imported by GitBook to provide the backbone of published documentation.
We talked with Addison Schultz, Developer Relations Lead and GitBook representative at the OpenAPI Initiative.
Please tell us about your organization and your needs in publishing well-described APIs.
GitBook is a modern documentation platform that helps teams create clear, well-structured public documentation, including API references. As an API documentation platform, our priority is to ensure that teams can easily create high-quality, up-to-date, and beautiful documentation. Teams need a solution that allows them to present API details in a structured way, automate updates as APIs evolve, and offer an interactive experience for developers to explore endpoints. Clear, accessible API documentation improves developer adoption, reduces support requests, and enhances the overall API experience – and that’s where GitBook fits in perfectly.
The OpenAPI tooling world is vast, with many approaches to leveraging OpenAPI to provide a great developer experience. How do you make the most of the features of OpenAPI in delivering your tool?
I think that any improvement to the spec that lets developers standardize their workflows is a win. When you have a more consistent way of documenting work, it not only makes life easier but also reinforces the value of good API documentation. The first point of a product for many teams is visiting APIs through a company’s documentation – and any way that we can provide to make that easier, more effective, and engaging is what I think will provide the biggest impact for getting more users to understand and work successfully with your product or API.
We’re currently building a report on the future of API documentation as well – and would love all the input we can get! You can find our the survey here.
What is the most important factor in your decision to become an OpenAPI Initiative member?
We have big plans for improving the ways developers document products and APIs – and because OpenAPI leads the way in crafting the way the world creates APIs, we want to be close with the teams who are pushing the spec forward and to make sure we can work together on pushing documentation in the same direction.
How would you like to see the OpenAPI Specification evolve in the future?
Any way the specification improves that allows developers to standardize their workflows even more is a great improvement in general, as it will allow them to also document their work in more standardized ways. We also want to help promote the overall importance of teams to document their APIs, and show the impact it has.
What role do the OpenAPI Initiative specifications play in the evolution of APIs and AI?
Similar to the question above, the more teams are able to standardize their work, the better they’ll be able to create more cohesive products and experiences – including products with AI. The OpenAPI specification is a great example of what teams can use to build better products overall.
Any final thoughts that provide insights on how you use OpenAPI that you feel is of interest to the community?
At GitBook, OpenAPI plays a key role in helping us and our users create dynamic, always up-to-date API documentation. By leveraging OpenAPI definitions, we enable users to create seamless synchronization between their API specs and documentation, reducing a lot of the manual effort needed to ensure accuracy. This improves the developer experience a lot, and as APIs continue to evolve, we see OpenAPI as an essential standard for driving clarity, automation, and accessibility in API documentation.
Thank you Addison for taking the time to talk with us!
Joining the OpenAPI Initiative
Want to become a member of the OpenAPI Initiative? Find more information here.
While you think about it, please checkout these resources:
- How to contribute guide.
- Our Specifications homepage, with the latest versions of OpenAPI, Arazzo, and Overlay.
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OpenAPI Initiative on GitHub, where we develop our specifications.
About the OpenAPI Initiative
The OpenAPI Initiative was created by a consortium of forward-looking industry experts who recognize the immense value of standardizing on how APIs are described. As an open governance structure under the Linux Foundation, the OAI is focused on creating, evolving and promoting a vendor-neutral description format. The OpenAPI Specification was originally based on the Swagger Specification, donated by SmartBear Software.
The OpenAPI Initiative has grown to a multi-specification that, first and foremost, provides the OpenAPI Specification, the most popular API description language available to API providers and consumers. The OpenAPI Initiative also supports the development of the Arazzo Specification, which caters for complex workflows invoking many APIs, and the Overlay Specification which provides the means to deterministically and reliably update an OpenAPI description through automation.
To learn what OpenAPI can do for you please visit our What is OpenAPI page.
About Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects like Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more are considered critical to the development of the world’s most important infrastructure. Its development methodology leverages established best practices and addresses the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
Contributors: Addison Schultz, Chris Wood