How to (and how not to) refer to the OAI in meetups, interviews, casual conversations, the settling of bar bets, and for conference presentations.
OpenAPI Specification refers the name of the popular API description format. It contains ONE space and FIVE capital letters. Following the first instance, it may be referred to as:
OAS: for example, "Can you send us your OAS document?"
Specification: for example "Can you send me your specification?" (may be abbreviated less formally as "spec")
OpenAPI (when referring to the format in comparison to another): such as "OpenAPI has a different signature mechanism than WSDL."
In order to connect readers familiar with the former name of the specification it may be introduced as, "The OpenAPI Specification, formerly known as the Swagger specification." (Note that if Swagger is mentioned in this way, it should be accompanied by the word "specification" as Swagger remains SmartBear's trademark for certain open source tools.)
The OpenAPI Initiative refers to the organization that oversees the specification. It must contain ONE space and FIVE capital letters. After the initial declaration, it may be referred to as the "OAI" in subsequent references, for example:
If you are creating something that works with or depends upon the OpenAPI Specification, you may decide you would like to use OpenAPI
in the name of said thing. In these cases, it is important to consider whether your audience might confuse your effort as being under the auspices of the OpenAPI Initiative. Ask yourself, "Might someone think this was an official tool/project/group of the OAI?" If the answer is, "Maybe," then consider adding a modifier. For example, OpenAPI Tools
vs OpenAPI-based Tools
or even Tools for OpenAPI
. If you're uncertain, please reach out via Twitter or email, and we can help work through it with you.
Similarly, you may wish to have a graphic that uses the colors or visual themes of the OpenAPI logo. Again, tread carefully, as it is important for the community that the OAI maintain a strong, recognizable brand. For example, if you're considering using the barbell element or the segmented circle, you may want to reach out to the OAI proactively to avoid a rebranding exercise later.
As per the charter, the OpenAPI Initiative (OAI) provides an open source, technical community, within which industry participants may contribute to building a vendor-neutral, portable, and open specification for providing technical metadata for REST APIs — the OpenAPI Specification (OAS). The following named groups may be properly referred to as:
Business Governance Board ("BGB", second reference)
Technical Steering Committee ("TSC", second reference)
Technical Oversight Board ("TOB", second reference)
The OpenAPI Initiative is one of the Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects, which are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.
What is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project?
What is the Linux Foundation?
This repository contains color (Pantone), black, and white versions of the OpenAPI Initiative's logo in both vector and bitmap. Whenever possible, prefer the color logo, though white or black treatments may be considered more appropriate under certain conditions, and the lettering may be omitted where a purely graphical representation is required. When using a graphic to represent the OpenAPI Specification rather than the OpenAPI Initiative, consider using the logos named OpenAPI_Specification_Logo_*
or omit the lettering on the main OAI logo. The OpenAPI logos should not be deformed or used in a way that may be considered disrespectful.
The official Pantone swatches are also available for reference.
On Nov. 5, 2015, SmartBear in conjunction with 3Scale, Apigee, Capital One, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, PayPal, and Restlet announced the formation of the OpenAPI Initiative, an open source project under the Linux Foundation. As part of the formation of the OAI, SmartBear donated the Swagger specification to the Linux Foundation, meaning that the OpenAPI Specification is semantically identical to the specification formerly known as the Swagger 2.0 specification. It is widely recognized as the most popular open source framework for defining and creating RESTful APIs, and today tens of thousands of developers are building thousands of open source repos of tools leveraging the OpenAPI Specification. In 2010, the Swagger specification was created by Wordnik, who published it under an open source license one year later. In March of 2015, SmartBear acquired Wordnik's interests in the Swagger projects from its parent company, Reverb Technologies.