This message is to clarify and make transparent the current situation of Public APIs, in addition to demonstrating the frustration of us maintainers. So read this if you find it interesting, please.
Well, I keep the Public APIs project together with other 3 developers (@pawelborkar, @marekdano and @yannbertrand) for a long time.
1 year ago, the Public APIs project was dead, with over 300 open pull requests and dozens of unresolved issues. We started work and resolved all PRs and open issues in about 2 months. Since then, more than 1000 PRs have been resolved, dozens of issues resolved, several improvements to the project and a remarkable growth. So it's clear that we've revived and improved the project.
Over time, we had several other ideas to further improve the project for the community, but we encountered a number of problems that prevented us from executing them. Many of these issues are related to our access level in the public-apis organization/repository, as we needed to activate special features in the settings and create new repositories in the organization.
We started making attempts to communicate with people working at APILayer (current owner of the public-apis organization/project) to try to help us improve the project, but this proved extremely difficult.
I spoke with employees and ex-employees, but could not get help. I also spoke to John Burr (APILayer's General Manager) but he hasn't responded for many months.
I made several more attempts to communicate with Julian Zehetmayr and Paul Zehetmayr (co-founders and former CEOs of APILayer), but got no response. I believe they are very busy people.
Just trying to communicate with APILayer to help us improve the project and failing in almost every attempt is frustrating for us maintainers. In addition to other problems caused by the apilayer-admin user, who sometimes made undue modifications that caused all our tests and project policies to be broken.
Also, we noticed that this week all of us maintainers had our access levels lowered without any communication, motivation or anything close to that. Now we don't even have access to the basic settings in the repository.
So realize how frustrating this is for us, but we're still trying because we believe it's important to the community.
We have no idea why APILayer is acting this way with us maintainers who help revive and improve the project. We just want help and collaboration so that everything works well without harming the community.
So, due to all these problems, I have indicated possible solutions to help us to APILayer representatives:
APILayer add us as one of the owners or members of the public-apis organization with the necessary access to move forward with the project
Or if APILayer is not interested in maintaining and helping to evolve the project (which we believe, given the whole situation), transfer it to one of us maintainers so that we can improve it. I believe that this is an adequate measure given everything I have described, and it would solve several communication problems that APILayer would not need to deal with, in addition, of course, to help an entire community to improve it all. Transferring projects is very well seen by the community, and this transfer to the right people who will maintain the project.
But again I didn't get any straight answer to that. Then notice how frustrating this is.
We greatly want APILayer's collaboration and understanding. We don't want the project to die again or be used in a way that harms the community with inappropriate additions. We just want to help.
@yannbertrand also wrote about the situation on his blog:
Hi community
This message is to clarify and make transparent the current situation of Public APIs, in addition to demonstrating the frustration of us maintainers. So read this if you find it interesting, please.
Well, I keep the Public APIs project together with other 3 developers (@pawelborkar, @marekdano and @yannbertrand) for a long time.
1 year ago, the Public APIs project was dead, with over 300 open pull requests and dozens of unresolved issues. We started work and resolved all PRs and open issues in about 2 months. Since then, more than 1000 PRs have been resolved, dozens of issues resolved, several improvements to the project and a remarkable growth. So it's clear that we've revived and improved the project.
See more at: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis/issues/1268
Over time, we had several other ideas to further improve the project for the community, but we encountered a number of problems that prevented us from executing them. Many of these issues are related to our access level in the public-apis organization/repository, as we needed to activate special features in the settings and create new repositories in the organization.
We started making attempts to communicate with people working at APILayer (current owner of the public-apis organization/project) to try to help us improve the project, but this proved extremely difficult.
I spoke with employees and ex-employees, but could not get help. I also spoke to John Burr (APILayer's General Manager) but he hasn't responded for many months.
I made several more attempts to communicate with Julian Zehetmayr and Paul Zehetmayr (co-founders and former CEOs of APILayer), but got no response. I believe they are very busy people.
See more at: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis/issues/1268#issuecomment-793154290
Just trying to communicate with APILayer to help us improve the project and failing in almost every attempt is frustrating for us maintainers. In addition to other problems caused by the apilayer-admin user, who sometimes made undue modifications that caused all our tests and project policies to be broken.
See the history of apilayer-admin: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis/commits?author=apilayer-admin
Also, we noticed that this week all of us maintainers had our access levels lowered without any communication, motivation or anything close to that. Now we don't even have access to the basic settings in the repository.
So realize how frustrating this is for us, but we're still trying because we believe it's important to the community.
We have no idea why APILayer is acting this way with us maintainers who help revive and improve the project. We just want help and collaboration so that everything works well without harming the community.
So, due to all these problems, I have indicated possible solutions to help us to APILayer representatives:
But again I didn't get any straight answer to that. Then notice how frustrating this is.
We greatly want APILayer's collaboration and understanding. We don't want the project to die again or be used in a way that harms the community with inappropriate additions. We just want to help.
@yannbertrand also wrote about the situation on his blog:
Other links that may be useful for more information:
If this issue is permanently deleted to hide what I've described, you can find a permanent record at:
Wayback Machine:
archive.today:
Originally posted by @matheusfelipeog in https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis/issues/3104