[od-discuss] Registration for accessing open datasets

[Paul Norman]

On 10/19/2014 12:42 PM, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> (1) If an API key is available quickly and without discrimination, how 
> does it protect system resources? I guess it allows shutting down 
> users who don't intend to be malicious. I wonder when this is a strong 
> use case, when surely lower level protections against resource abuse 
> are taken by any serious API provider.
An API key provides a means of identifying users and contacting them. 
This is important not just in cases of bad scripts, but also to contact 
users to notify them that API endpoints will be changing, and the 
version of the API they're using is about to be shut down.

The API providers, particularly government ones, feel that they can't 
commit to providing the same API indefinitely, and can't change their 
API without first informing users. I'm not sure I entirely agree with 
this, but I do understand it.

As a developer, I'd much rather have an API with an easily available key 
than an API that changes without any attempts to contact users, or any 
way to sign up for announcements of changes, which seems to be the 
alternative. Unfortunately, governments have, in my experience, been bad 
at providing stable APIs, download URLs, schemas, and other features 
needed to mechanically use their data.