That world formed the web’s foundations — without that world to build on, Google, Facebook, and Twitter couldn’t exist. But they’ve now grown so large that everything from that web-native world is now a threat to them, and they want to shut it down. “Sunset” it. “Clean it up.” “Retire” it. Get it out of the way so they can get even bigger and build even bigger proprietary barriers to anyone trying to claim their territory. Well, fuck them, and fuck that.

Lockdown – Marco Arment.

If those services don’t trust me enough to give me an RSS feed, why should I trust them with my data?

Jeremy Keith — Battle for the planet of the APIs.

The mistake my VC friends make is they think it's either/or. Either you support the open web and are a charity, or you build a silo, monetize it, and get rich. What really happens is that the silos are eventually undermined by the open web.

From Dave Winer. More good stuff in his post on what is actually meant by the "open web".

• Open is better than closed.
• Transparent is better than opaque.
• Simple is better than complex.
• Accessible is better than inaccessible.
• Sharing is better than hoarding.
• Linked is more useful than isolated.
• Fine grained is preferable to aggregated.
• (Although there are legitimate privacy and security limitations.)
• Optimise for machine readability — they can translate for humans.
• Barriers prevent worthwhile things from happening.
• “Flawed, but out there” is a million times better than “perfect, but unattainable”.
• Opening data up to thousands of eyes makes the data better.
• Iterate in response to demand.
• There is no one true feed for all eternity — people need to maintain this stuff.

The Zen of Open Data by Chris McDowall