Last updated on September 8th, 2018
A new-ish meme is floating around the tech sector these days that has caused more than a little bit of consternation for advocates of free and open source software: the idea that open APIs are somehow the equivalent of open source. If you think of vendor lock-in like addictions, then proprietary software is like crack, open core is like X, and on down the line. Open APIs are far less addictive on the lock-in scale: perhaps at the level of cigarettes–but they can still hook you in.
