Today we are delighted to announce the release of Arazzo, a new OpenAPI Initiative specification designed to describe sequences of API calls to meet the orchestration needs of API providers and consumers.
In a digital economy increasingly powered by APIs there is a need to accurately reflect the increasing complexity of the integration required to do business. Organizations calling multiple APIs to execute business flows and functions, sometimes across multiple service providers, require guidance and support to correctly implement sequences of API calls, with cognizance of success and failure at each step.
The Workflows Special Interest Group (SIG), part of the OpenAPI Initiative umbrella of specifications, has created the first release of the Arazzo Specification to meet the increasingly complex integration needs. Arazzo will allow API and integration service providers to build on top of OpenAPI Specification, providing information on sequences of API calls that comprise a flow or function.
Using Arazzo API providers can:
Link multiple operations, described through OpenAPI or other Arazzo descriptions, into one sequence of activities.
Provide criteria that describe success or failure based on the responses received from the APIs that API consumers call.
Implement variables that can carry dynamic variables from one API call to another, ensuring that data is successfully carried, as needed, through the context of the described sequence.
Like the OpenAPI Specification, the goal is to create a rich description language that can be used both for documentation and to automatically create integration code from machine-readable sources.
Frank Kilcommins, Principal API Evangelist at SmartBear and member of the Workflow SIG team, describes Arazzo as:
“An important milestone on the path to improved API maturity across the industry. By providing deterministic recipes for value-based usage of APIs, the Arazzo Specification, through its human- and machine-readable attributes, acts as living API documentation, reducing dependence on out-of-band onboarding guides. It ensures assertable qualities for API providers and regulatory stakeholders across the API lifecycle, while also empowering tooling vendors to craft the next wave of SDKs and code generators.
The Arazzo Specification enables human API consumers to better understand how to use and combine APIs, focusing on their jobs to be done, thus reducing their mean time to integration. Concurrently, it offers a consistent and interoperable mechanism for the new wave of AI consumers to achieve expected API outcomes first and every time.”
Arazzo will evolve as more organizations and tooling makers implement the specification. Please visit the specification page and repository, or join our Slack channel for more information.
What comes next for the OpenAPI Specification? How will v4 improve on the success of OpenAPI v3? What can the spec help solve problems in the context of AI and LLMs?
As 2023 comes to a close, answers to these questions are beginning to take shape. With an aggressive goal of launching v4 “Moonwalk” by the end of 2024, it is going to be an exciting year.
Because there is so much work to be done, it was necessary to establish some guiding principles. After reviewing the major proposals and discussions of the last year, these are semantics, signatures, inclusion, organization, upgrading, and their order is important:
🌖 Semantics provide purpose. It is not sufficient to describe the mechanics of an API without also describing its semantics, whether the consumer is a human or an AI. Semantics join the what (… does this do?) and the why (… does this matter?) to the how (… does this work?).
OpenAPI has helped people build better APIs faster, and the ecosystem of tooling continues to deliver more value year after year. What is new today in 2023 is the rise of a new kind of API consumer—generative AI. LLMs can process OpenAPI descriptions and then use that API to solve problems. With generative AI’s ability to understand natural language, OpenAPI can help bring the power of APIs to non-developers with a level of accessibility never seen before. To fully realize this potential, API producers should decorate their mechanical descriptions of HTTP requests with details that convey the meaning and purpose of those API operations. This, in turn, helps both people and LLMs to achieve better results.
To say this another way, people have been using squishy, natural language to talk to each other for centuries, and we’ve used crunchy, programming languages to talk to machines for decades. LLMs bridge the squishy and the crunchy worlds, which means that a huge number of people can use APIs who could not before.
Regardless of your opinion of generative AI, from over-hyped to world-changing, we can expect that many people will be using OpenAPI to drive AI-based API consumers. If OpenAPI does not step up to address the needs of that community, they will find alternatives.
🌒 Signature please! An API represents a set of functions, each of which describes a client-oriented purpose. A function is identifiable by its signature, which correlates to a set of HTTP interactions. Moonwalk places this concept at its center.
Any HTTP API is always a means to some end. API consumers prefer to reuse existing functionality, and ideally they can learn about that functionality in terms that are most natural to them. That a PUT/PATCH/DELETE returns a 200 or a 204 is an implementation detail that pales in comparison to the function it performs for the client. Today there are limited ways to express the signature of an API function in OpenAPI. A pathItem can’t use query parameters to distinguish operations. There can only be one operation per HTTP method. These are artificial constraints on the signature of the API functions due to the lack of a formal definition of the unique signature. Past efforts in OpenAPI have focused on enabling developers to describe HTTP APIs. This reprioritizes them so that developers can use OpenAPI to define API functions with unique signatures that then map each signature to HTTP mechanics.
🌕 Inclusion needs a big tent: Moonwalk aspires to describe all HTTP-based APIs. While it remains neutral on the design aspects of HTTP APIs, it recognizes the importance of having different design styles and opinions.
Moonwalk should be able to describe the HTTP APIs that developers may already have as well as to design the APIs they may want to build. It should be able to accurately map the signature of an API function to an actual instance of an HTTP request and response provided by the API. Moonwalk does prefer resource-oriented API styles due to their overwhelming popularity, but it should be possible to describe purely RPC APIs, even when those API signatures are distinguished via HTTP header values or request body values.
🌗 Organization through separation of concerns. For example, the changing shape of an API should move independently of API deployments. API deployments may be secured with different security schemes. API functions’ signatures should not be tightly coupled to content schema formats.
To support the growing customer base with diverse needs, the feature count will undoubtedly grow, introducing more complexity. To counterbalance this, we will apply more rigor to the modularization of different aspects of the API description. We will strive to eliminate ambiguity where it currently exists and leverage existing standards to minimize unnecessary novelty. Our goal is to provide a better experience for API description consumers, authors and tooling providers.
🌑 Mechanical upgrading. An important principle of OpenAPI v3 was that it offered a direct upgrade path from v2. Moonwalk carries this forward, which means that it must again be possible to mechanically upgrade to Moonwalk from v3 (and by extension, v2).
Important open source projects like OpenAPI depend on contributions from many people. If you are as excited as we are about the ideas above or about the opportunity to leverage AI to help APIs be used by more people, then please get involved! A great way to start is to join our weekly calls on Thursdays (details), and anyone who wants to join is welcome!
The OpenAPI Specification is an integral part of software development and delivery of APIs. In 2023, we have been joining multiple API related conferences to connect directly with API users and enthusiasts around the world. Next up, the City of Light! Join us for the OpenAPI Initiative’s “OAI Track” at apidays Paris on December 6-7, 2023!
The OAI Track is a specialized forum at apidays Paris hosted by the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI). This focused track aims to provide a platform for API practitioners to share and exchange valuable insights, experiences, and best practices related to OpenAPI. At Paris, we will have 3 different sessions with a total of 12 speakers!
OAI Track Program Sessions
Current and Future Trends in API Specifications
Improving APIs and API Landscapes with API Descriptions
API Governance and Management with API Descriptions
Call for Contributions
The OAI Track is currently inviting contributions from interested individuals and organizations. If you have an experience or insight to share, we would be thrilled to include your voice in the discourse.
Knowledge Sharing: Learn from industry experts and peers actively involved in API management and OpenAPI specifications.
Networking: Connect with a passionate community of API developers, architects, and business stakeholders.
Visibility: An opportunity to present your work and insights to a highly specialized and relevant audience.
Join Us, Join the Conversation!
Whether you’re an adept API craftsperson or an enterprise visionary keen on tapping into API magic, the OAI Track provides a fantastic platform to immerse and interact with the best of the API world.
The OpenAPI Initiative, the consortium of forward-looking industry experts focused on creating, evolving, and promoting the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), is announcing today that WireMock has joined as a new member. Welcome WireMock!
WireMock was created in 2011 and has been a popular open source tool for API mocking. Last year, project founders Tom Akehurst and Uri Maoz launched a company with the same name. They created a managed cloud service called WireMock Cloud, and in May 2023 announced a $6.5 million investment from Ridge Ventures, with participation from First Rays Venture Partners, Scribble Ventures and several unnamed investors.
Building a stable and predictable environment when creating APIs is crucial to the efficiency and success of developers. WireMock is a flexible and free open source platform that can be run as a standalone server, or in a hosted version via the WireMock Cloud managed service.
“We are thrilled to welcome WireMock as a member of the OpenAPI Initiative! Mocking APIs plays a crucial role in reducing development time and increasing productivity for developers. The open source community relies heavily on mocking tools in order to speed up development, better test for edge cases, and much more,” said Isabelle Mauny, OpenAPI Business Governing Board Chair. “It’s important for tools makers to implement the OpenAPI Specification and mocking APIs is one of the great benefits of using the OpenAPI Specification for your APIs.”
“OpenAPI is the key standard around which a rich ecosystem of tools and infrastructure is rapidly evolving. We believe that first-class OpenAPI support in WireMock will unlock a huge amount of productivity for both API developers and consumers,” said Tom Akerhust, the WireMock creator and the CTO of WireMock Inc.
“API-first development is at the core of both the WireMock open source project and WireMock Cloud, our developer productivity platform. Support for OpenAPI is central to our mission of enabling developers to simulate APIs across the entire application lifecycle”, said Oleg Nenashev, Community Builder and CNCF/CDF Ambassador, WireMock, “We believe that our vision and products are closely aligned with the OpenAPI Initiative. We’re pleased to join OAI as a member and work on expanding the OpenAPI ecosystem together”
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) 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. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visithttps://www.openapis.org
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.
About WireMock
WireMock is a popular open-source tool for API simulations (aka API mocking). It is used for integration testing of applications, especially via REST API. Started in 2011 as a Java library by Tom Akehurst, it now spans multiple programming languages and technology stacks. WireMock helps to create stable test and development environments, isolate code from flakey 3rd parties and simulate APIs that aren’t currently available. It can run as a test library, as a standalone server or via the WireMock Cloud service. With more than 300 contributors, 50+ integrations and 5+ million downloads a month, it is one of the most popular open source projects in its domain.
About WireMock, Inc.
WireMock Inc. is building software to unlock developer productivity by enabling collaborative API design, mocking APIs and eliminating slowdowns caused by external dependencies. The company was started in 2022 by Tom Akehurst and Uri Maoz becoming its CEO and CTO. WireMock Cloud, the company’s flagship product, is built on top of the WireMock open source project stewarded by the company.
The API Specification Conference – ASC 2022 – is being held in person from September 19 – 21 in South San Francisco! OpenAPI Initiative’s API Specifications Conference (ASC) is a place for API practitioners and enthusiasts to come together and discuss the evolution of API technologies. The OpenAPI Specification, RAML, Blueprint, gRPC, OData, JSON Schema, GraphQL, AsyncAPI, and other formats will all be topics, enabling attendees to get familiar with these formats and discuss how to use them in practice.
ASC includes cutting-edge technology keynotes and sessions that chart the future of APIs with in-depth specification and standards discussions. This year’s first announced keynote is presented by Jean Yang, CEO of Akita Software. Jean is the founder and CEO of Akita Software, a developer tools company building “one-click” observability. Previously, Jean was a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She has a Ph.D. from MIT, holds software tools patents from work at Microsoft Research and Facebook, and was selected as one of the MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2016.
The event is designed to be highly interactive with plenty of discussion time throughout the workshops and sessions!
The lineup of early bird talks is also being announced and includes presentations from:
Erez Yalon, Checkmarx, Evolution of the API Security Top 10
Jeremy Glassenberg, Docusign, Setting Standards and Create Smooth API Implementations
Brian Terlson, Microsoft, Developing API-First Multi-Protocol Services with Cadl
The OpenAPI Initiative, the consortium of forward-looking industry experts focused on evolving and implementing the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), is announcing today that Kubeshop.io has joined as a new member. Kubeshop’s CTO, Ole Lensmar, served as the chairman of the OpenAPI Initiative from its inception in 2016 until 2020. We welcome back the familiar face!
Kubeshop is an open-source accelerator/incubator focused on Kubernetes (“K8s”). Kubeshop identifies needs and offers resources and guidance to projects within the k8s space, specifically focusing on helping Developers, Testers, and DevOPS engineers with tooling that strives to make complex workflows simpler and more productive. Currently, Kubeshop is home to Kusk, Kubtest, and Monokle:
Kusk allows users to work with an OpenAPI specification as the source of truth for Kubernetes manifests, simplifying cluster configuration and management across a number of popular Kubernetes Ingress Controllers
Kubtest provides a framework for testing of applications and APIs running under Kubernetes, allowing teams to decouple test orchestration and execution from ci/cd tooling and centralize test-result management and analysis
Monokle simplifies everyday tasks and workflows related to management and debugging of k8s manifests
“Joining and supporting the OAI was an obvious step for us; the OAI is central to the continued adoption and evolution of the OpenAPI Specification, and we are excited about the prospect of housing projects targeting OpenAPI specific needs and Kubernetes workflows,” said Ole Lensmar, CTO, Kubeshop.
We look forward to watching Kubeshop grow and evolve, and help out k8s developers!
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) 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. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org
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.
The OpenAPI Initiative welcomes apiplatform.io, a productivity management platform that allows users to build and manage backend applications with no code. With apiplatform.io, users can create and host fully functional workflows and APIs to move legacy databases to the cloud.
apiplatform boasts an extensive client list including Lamico Systems and Site Lantern.
apiplatform allows users to go from idea to product quickly. Thanks to their fully automated but highly configurable model, databases can be efficiently migrated according to the OpenAPI Specification (OAS). By allowing users to modernize databases with speed, apiplatform lessens user costs without sacrificing quality.
We sat down with co-founder and CEO Muthu Raju to learn more about what apiplatform is currently working on, and why they joined the OpenAPI Initiative.
Why are you joining the OpenAPI Initiative, and why now?
At apiplatform.io, we automate all the steps in the API development cycle so that our users can achieve integration and digital transformation at speed. We automate API generation and deployment based on API Specification provided as input to our platform.
The OpenAPI Initiative is focused on creating and promoting a vendor-neutral description format. Therefore, we feel OpenAPI Initiative is the right place to collaborate and arrive at a description format for building business logic, workflows, and continuous automation in our platform.
In your mission statement, you talk about eliminating technology barriers. How are you doing this?
We automate the developer lifecycle processes for a given API Specification by generating the code for the specification, testing and deploying them to a cloud platform, and setting up a gateway for secured access control. So, the end-user doesn’t need to understand how to use the tools, platforms, services, and technologies to operationalize their API or invest their time in coding, setting up the continuous delivery pipeline, etc. One can jump from design to delivery of API for a given specification!
apiplatform.io developed the Covid19 Virtual Assistant to help people find and use COVID-19 data. How does it work, and how does someone access it?
https://covid19.apiplatform.io/ was developed and deployed in early 2020 by integrating the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) along with a Virtual Assistant “GOVID” to assist people looking for food, medicine, online consultation, etc. This Virtual Assistance was helping people until the Indian Government authorized only a few private and government bodies to host such services during the pandemic.
What’s important about the new OpenAPI Specification 3.1.0 for apiplatform.io? What are the challenges for broader adoption?
OpenAPI Specification, be it 3.1.0 or any other version, will be the primary specification supported by apiplatform.io which means we automate the development lifecycle of API based on the specification. Therefore, we don’t foresee any challenge as such for the broader adoption.
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) 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. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org
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.
Welcome to APIAddicts! APIAddicts boasts one of the largest communities of API practitioners with an extensive international presence in Spanish-speaking countries including Spain, Perú and México with 5,000+ APIAddicts worldwide, and over a million visualizations.
APIAddicts hosts multiple events throughout the year for developers wanting to discuss, learn more, and contribute to the growth and integration of APIs. Many details are provided in the interview below. APIAddicts Days is one of the most important events hosted by them annually. Companies and professionals share their experiences while analyzing the successes and failures in the current framework that supports API. To find out how APIAddicts Days was in 2020, click here.
APIAddicts has a strong education focus. Their School of API’s aims at helping professionals improve their use of APIs. At the end of the courses, you are awarded an API Evangelist Certificate / Recognition / Diploma.
We wanted to learn more about their upcoming events and the latest updates in the API world, and what working with the OpenAPI Initiative would look like. We talked to Marco Antonio Sanz, founder of APIAddicts, to find out more!
How was APIAddicts born?
In 2013 five very techie friends and colleagues were working in large companies managing APIs and realized a lack of APIs documentation and education in Spanish at that moment.
So they started giving a series of informal talks to share their knowledge. Meetup groups were created, which are still active today, to connect with other people interested in digital transformation and we started to meet monthly to talk about news or updates in the sector, actually the first meetings were in a bar in Getafe, until it was gradually formalized.
This was growing and finally formed what today is APIAddicts, the largest Spanish-speaking community around APIs with more than 5,000 APIAddicts in Spain, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.
How hard is it to get an API Evangelist Diploma? What are the main benefits?
The evangelization of APIs and the training of professionals in it is so important, so from the Foundation we wanted to go a step further and help companies to qualify their teams with the most updated knowledge and from the best experts.
We had already been doing the API Owner course for years, which is in great popular demand today, and we decided to complete the training with the specialization courses in Security, Testing, Design and Architecture. This way you can get an overview of the entire APIfication process of a company and learn how to manage each of these phases optimally.
All the courses involve a total training of 50 hours with 80% of hands-on practice where students can apply the knowledge they have learned. Once the courses are finished, they present an API project to the teachers, who evaluate and assess the documentation.
If they achieve the API project taking into account the requirements and concepts of the courses, they obtain the certifications of each specialty and the API Evangelist Diploma, the highest certification for an API professional.
Nowadays there are many companies that trust in the courses of the API School of the Foundation and with them they specialize their teams, PM, QA, Technical Lead, Analysts, Coordinators… Taking these courses guarantees you knowledge in the whole APIfication process and a clear management of the necessary tools. This not only increases your job projection but also your career within the companies.
What is APIAddicts mission in the evangelization of APIs?
We have always been aware that, although APIs are a key factor in companies that want to be competitive today, it is a term that generates a lot of confusion. Therefore, we could say that the APIAddicts Foundation’s evangelizing mission began in 2013 when APIs were already being used but no one fully understood what they were for. In fact, the role of our community has been essential to introduce the transformative potential of APIs in Spain.
In this sense, we carry out annual studies, Open Source tools, training courses, 3 large events: Webseries, Startups and APIs and APIAddicts Days and more than 20 annual meetups. We are the community that has created more API documentation in Spanish and now we hope to continue doing so with OpenAPI.
We believe that if we had to define what our main differentiation is, it would be that we always try to have the best referents of the sector to inspire in the use of APIs and always from a close treatment, being a real community. That is why, for example, all our API School courses are not recorded because for us this makes you lose an essential part of the API training: sharing experiences and real cases with the live expert.
Finally, every day, and more and more strongly, we continue to do what we were born for: to bring the knowledge of APIs to every Spanish-speaking corner of the world, in a disruptive way.
What is the relationship between APIAddicts and CloudAPPI?
After starting the evangelization of APIs through talks and meetups, the community was gaining popularity and with it came business opportunities. This became a turning point in which they decided to leave their usual jobs to set up their own consulting firm, outside the bases of the association, because on one side runs the foundation and on the other the company, but they could accompany each other as partners in their growth, both approaching the life cycle of the APIs from different points of view.
Therefore, today the relationship between both entities is based on sponsorship, so they actively participate in different events. However, the Foundation supports itself with its own budget thanks to the other sponsors, courses of the API School and prices of some of the tickets for our events.
We always had it clear, the Foundation was born altruistically by a group of teckie friends who love APIs to promote the knowledge of APIs in Spanish and will always remain so.
Why did APIAddicts join OpenAPI Initiative and why now?
In these last few years we have been trying to take API Evangelism further in all formats: Open Source tools, international events, new broadcasting formats such as podcasts, specialization courses… Within all of this, we saw the need to be part of a development community as essential for the future of APIs as the OpenAPI Initiative.
This way we can offer added value to our community and increase the role of the Foundation in the future of APIs. We want to help to improve the specification and thus improve the level of the tools that allow the implementation of API First methodologies, such as API Tools.
We enjoyed hearing from the APIAddicts team and learning about the fantastic work they are doing. We appreciate the value they place in community building and vocalizing the needs of the API community.
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) 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. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org
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.
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) is looking for three individuals to fill three separate year-long contracts to help lead the conversation around the leading API specification. We are looking for three self-starting individuals who are familiar with the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), and will help roll up their sleeves and help move a handful of projects forward.
The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) has emerged as the leading way to describe the surface area of your APIs in the last five years, and the need for help to support the community has grown dramatically. As part of this growth we’ve identified a few priority projects we are managing using Github Projects, and would love to get you involved!
Projects
Here is a list of the current projects OAI members and community have prioritized, which we have also tagged by the type of work involved, shared a brief description of what is involved, and provided a link to the Kanban board for each project.
OpenAPI Search Engine Optimization (Marketing) – Ongoing work to help improve the search engine optimization for the OAI and OAS, helping elevate the presence of the specification.
New Member Identification & Engagement (Marketing, Community, Business Development) – Work to identify potential new members to the OAI and reach out to them to help start a conversation and make them aware of the benefits of being a member.
Member Showcase & Engagement (Marketing, Community, Business Development) – Continually improving how we showcase and engage with the members of the OAI, and increase their participation within the OAS community.
Profile & Engage with API Providers (Community, Business Development) – Work to identify, profile, and build relationships with API providers who have implemented the OpenAPI specification, and publish profile to a central database.
Profile and Engage with Open Source Tooling (Marketing, Community, Business Development) – Establish an official directory of open source tooling that uses OAS, and actively work to establish and build relationships with each tooling provider to get them more involved in the community.
Business Sector Showcase & Engagement (Business Development) – Work to profile business sectors that are putting OpenAPI to work, then engage, and build relationships with individuals or organizations, while helping stimulate OAI special interest groups in these areas.
All of these positions require leadership qualities to help define, prioritize, and execute on plans, and to engage with the OpenAPI community to increase participation, member value, and drive overall community energy.pods
Contract Details
These are the details of the work, with more details available upon request:
3 Individual Part-Time Contractors
One Year Contract from September 15th 2021 through Sept 15th, 2022)
These are the basic requirements for being considered for the contract positions:
OpenAPI Awareness
Project Management Skills
Writing and Editing Skills
Enjoys Working with People
Embraces values of collaboration, inclusion, and diversity
Contract Pitch
When applying for one of the contracts, please pitch us on which project or projects your skills are a match for accomplishing, and demonstrate why you would be our choice to help not just make a project happen, but help us lead where the project goes next.
How to Apply
Please email your cover letter, resume, and any questions to jobs@openapis.org by August 15th, 2021 to be considered for the positions by the OAI hiring committee, with a start date of September 15th, 2021.
Get Involved
Even if you aren’t interested in submitting for any of these job postings we encourage you to get involved in the community and help out on any of these projects. In addition to participating as part of the weekly technical and marketing meetings, the OAI is looking for help across these projects, writing blog posts, and creation of educational materials, so please feel free to reach out via social channels or email to get involved.
RapidAPI is joining the OpenAPI Initiative! RapidAPI helps developers find, manage, and test APIs. They provide an API Marketplace for developers to discover and connect to thousands of public APIs. The company’s services can be tailored to a company’s brand, to build private marketplaces for internal and external APIs. Notable enterprise clients include SAP, Cisco, Tata, and Hyatt.
To learn more about RapidAPI Marketplace, sign up for a free account here.
To better understand how RapidAPI provides a next-generation infrastructure for APIs and what a collaboration with the OpenAPI Initiative would mean for them, we asked Iddo Gino, CEO and Founder.
Why did RapidAPI join the OpenAPI Initiative, and why now?
APIs are the heart and soul of RapidAPI. With acquisitions like the Paw Client and unique developer tools such as RapidAPI Testing — we care deeply about the developer experience of writing, publishing, and ultimately maintaining APIs. OpenAPI plays a significant role in all of this.
Our goal in joining the OpenAPI Initiative is to give back to the community. As we build the next-generation of API Developer Tooling, it’s more important than ever to be part of the API builders’ community conversations. OAI is where API builders and API consumers go beyond the original spec to collaborate on exciting things such as JSON Schema and Asynchronous APIs and beyond. RapidAPI wants to help advance the specification through participation in the community.
Additionally, we’re committed to making our platform easily interface with 3rd party tools. Therefore, it’s important for us to continually support the OpenAPI Specification format, allow interconnectivity of all tools, and avoid customer lock-in.
The RapidAPI team has a history of participation in development communities. Our Head of DevRel Ahmad Awais is an active voting member of the Node.js Community Committee and WordPress Foundation Core Contributor before that. Our Head of Marketing, Suzanne Panoplos, has been active in the Open Container Initiative and CNCF. As you can see, joining the OpenAPI Initiative and becoming a member of the Linux Foundation couldn’t be a more natural transition for RapidAPI.
What goes into making an API marketplace? What makes one better than the other?
A robust API marketplace enables developers to find, connect and manage APIs from a single place and support a variety of APIs including REST, SOAP, GraphQL or Asynchronous APIs. For each API you should be able to see performance metrics like average latency, uptime, and popularity and be able to test the API from the browser.
Additionally, a marketplace should enable you to:
Gather information about each API using the endpoints page to view a list of endpoints, documentation, and a code snippet to help you implement the code into your app.
Subscribe to API plans to start using it. Manage all your API subscriptions and payments through a single source.
Utilize a single key for all your APIs.
Manage applications and API keys using a single dashboard. Using this dashboard, you should be able to:
Monitor API performance by visualizing how many requests are made to different APIs, tracking the number of requests that return an error, and viewing latency data for each API.
Debug faster by inspecting the logs for all requested data.
View usage and billing information for a breakdown of API spending, including the monthly recurring and overage charges.
Manage subscriptions from one place including quota usage and time remaining until the quota limit resets.
How has COVID affected the use of APIs in the past year?
With the pandemic, digitalization has gone from being a “nice to have” to an imperative to survival. Take Starbucks as an example. Before the pandemic, 7% of Starbucks revenue came from mobile ordering. During the pandemic, 100% of their revenue came from mobile ordering as most stores were closed to in-person ordering.
To react to the changing environment during the pandemic, companies had to adjust their application development process and accelerate their delivery to address changing market conditions. To do so, companies have to rely on APIs in their software development.
This trend is true across almost all industries during the pandemic. Still, there has been an explosion of API usage in healthcare settings, where services, appointments, and scheduling have taken place online to the homebound consumption of services such as food ordering, retail, etc.
This trend was highlighted in RapidAPI’s 2020 Developer Survey, released earlier this year. The survey indicated that developer reliance on APIs accelerated during the pandemic and will continue to increase in 2021.The data revealed that 61% of developers used more APIs in 2020 than in 2019, and 71% plan to use even more during the upcoming year.
What’s your vision for API marketplaces 1-3 years out?
As API proliferation continues to increase across all organizations, enterprises will find it to be a necessity for finding, connecting to and managing their APIs. Marketplaces will need to provide:
An Open Platform – With organizations using disparate API gateways, marketplaces will offer a platform for integrating with multiple different gateways and clouds.
Developer Experience – Marketplaces will need to be continually developer-first, providing the key features needed to deliver API use and reuse such as deep search and tagging API analytics for providers or consumers, and advanced usage controls for developers.
Out of the box experience – Marketplaces will need to have everything developers need to succeed including advanced features such deep search, end user analytics, and developer registration workflows.
Many-to-Many Model – Marketplaces will need to support multiple teams of API providers offering APIs to internal consumers as well as partners and customers.
Support for All API Types – Marketplaces should support all of the last APIs including SOAP, REST, GraphQL, Async APIs like Kafka, and more.
Scalability – Marketplaces should scale to support hundreds of APIs with room for future growth.
Governance – Marketplaces will unify visibility and governance across all APIs in the organization, regardless of which clouds or API gateways are in use.
We are excited to welcome RapidAPI to our list of growing members and look forward to working closely together!
The OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) 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. To get involved with the OpenAPI Initiative, please visit https://www.openapis.org
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.
What comes next for the OpenAPI Specification? How will v4 improve on the success of OpenAPI v3? What can the spec help solve problems in the context of AI and LLMs?
