StackOverthrow

An old nitpick of mine just resurfaced with a vengeance, and since the most compelling things for me to write about seem to be annoyances and complaints, this will fit right in.

I am working on a start up with a partner. We’re going to be supporting some hardware cards with our software application. Well, we thought we were going to support hardware cards. It now turns out we’re going to support only one card manufacturer.  Unfortunately the other manufacturer thinks it’s better to restrict access to its API than to give it away for free. You can’t get their API unless you buy the card, and we have not yet bought their card.

We’re software developers. We’re a startup. We’re staying clear of investors for now. Our startup is bootstrapping itself and exotic hardware is an expenditure we’re going to live without for now. We don’t want to spend $10,000 right now on a piece of hardware just to get access to an API.
We’re not losing sleep over this – the more reasonable manufacturer’s cards are a fraction of the cost, and deliver the same, if not more functionality. In fact, if the unreasonable company let us use their API we wouldn’t have found the competitor with a better value, so we are happy this has happened.  However, that doesn’t change the fact that the policy is dumb.

I have seen this kind of idiotic thinking in the past - for some reason some companies selling a service or data or hardware think that they should keep their APIs/interface a secret to protect something. Protect what, exactly? From people trying to use their products?  I would have imagined that you’d WANT to give people access to it - even offer to help them with writing applications for you API and hardware or service.  After all, the more developers that write software for your products the more access you have to end users. (read $$)

APIs shouldn’t be revenue generators – the services or data they provide are the revenue generators. Provide easy access to the APIs and help developers.

We weren’t trying to get something for free. We were hoping to provide value to our customers who already own the hardware cards and wished to use our software as well.  Most likely now they will see our solution, look at the vendors we support, notice the price difference, perhaps ask why we don’t support the other vendor (yet) and likely switch to the cheaper hardware we selected.  So, in not allowing us access to an API, the intransigent manufacturer has cost themselves many sales.

We have every intention of supporting the one who rejected us - eventually.  They are a big name in the field - the name everyone seems to know.  But they are going to lag in sales for our solution and market because of this stupid, screwed up posture.

There is no business justification for putting up roadblocks to your APIs. None.

If you are selling services, products or anything else and you have an API to access them: please, think about your policies. If you don’t allow third party vendors or anyone else access to the API for free, you are putting up HUGE barriers and likely costing yourselves business.