A Season of Change: Unlocking ¡APIcryphal! for All

In the northland, the trees have nearly lost all their leaves, the weather has cooled to a comfortable Vikings-jersey-over-sweatshirt temperature, and I've been thinking about change. A significant change has been at the forefront of my mind for a good chunk of this year, and it's time to make a switch. 

Starting today, I've eliminated all Net API Notes subscriber tiers. That means the ¡APIcryphal! historical retrospective series, previously available to paying subscribers only, is now freely accessible without charge. Each issue dives deep into exploring the stories and people behind some of the most impactful events in API history: 

• "Anyone Who Doesn't Do This Will Be Fired", Lessons from the Bezos' API Mandate Memo (2002)
• OAuth 2.0 and the "Road to Hell", Revisiting Eran Hammer's Damning of OAuth After a Decade of Practice
• "SOA is dead; long live services", What Anne Thomas's SOA insight says about today's API Practice
• BizDev 2.0: "Much, much better this way!", Caterina Fake's 2006 naming of an API-enabled approach to partnerships
• COPE: "No way we could have gotten that done without an API", How NPR's COPE strategy came to define API-driven flexibility
• "REST Has Become a Buzzword", Fielding, REST, and the continuous, even contrarian, act of industry reinterpretation
• Shuttering the API was the "Worst Thing We Did", Jack Dorsey, Twitter, and the API platform lessons to be learned from two decades of strategic pivots
• Getting Developers to "Gush About How Much They Love the API", Danielle Morrill, Twilio's API, and the Evolution of Developer First Marketing
• "Going from Web Page to Web Platform is a big deal", ProgrammableWeb and the Maturation of API Discovery

I'm excited that these are now unlocked for everyone to read. 

Why Is This Happening?

The short version is that I regularly re-evaluate how I share my work on the web. For more than a year, I've worked to maintain a regular quota of work per month with an additional piece (the ¡APIcryphal!) for paid subscribers. I feel like that experiment has run its course, and now it is time to try something different. 

Thanks to everyone for the attention, the shares, the likes, and the comments. It has been a year with many lessons learned and I'm excited to see what form the newsletter will take next. If there were a call to action at the end of this, I'd suggest reaching out to your favorite online creator and dropping a few lines about what you enjoy about their work. It may seem cliche, but a few kind words can make somebody's entire week. If that isn't a fantastic ROI, I don't know what is.

Till next time,

Matthew [@matthew (Fediverse), matthewreinbold.com (Website)]