APIToS Project

FACT WIZARD

APIToS

The APIToS project was made possible by the Critical Digital Infrastructure Grant, the Ford Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and support from the Mozilla, Omidyar and Open Society Foundations.

Many thanks to the funders and the digital infrastructure grantees for their support and the digital exchange all along the different phases of the project.

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About the API Terms of Service (APIToS) project

We intend to build a framework making API Terms of Service easily understandable and shareable, for a saner and safer digital infrastructure.
By conducting interviews, surveys and focus group with API users, providers and other stakeholders, by using a legal design approach and prototype testing, we have developed a model collaboratively to define a way forward for more standardized, accessible approaches to documenting and enforcing API Terms of Service.
Our research has clarified the frictions in the user experience of API, the power imbalance and inequalities between API producers and consumers explored the diversity of situations and people involved in the API ecosystem.

Moreover, this research designed a framework for healthier API ecosystems called FACT (FAIR API Commitment to Trust) related to a FACT license describing the mutual commitments between API Providers and Users.

Particular attention has been dedicated to the creation of resources that are easily readable and understandable for a wide audience, thus contributing to the establishment of a trustworthy and sustainable framework that can be easily implemented for the essential digital infrastructures that APIs represent.

The APIToS Project Team

Mehdi Medjaoui

is the founder of the worldwide apidays conferences series, which started in 2012 in Paris. Mehdi is highly involved in the API community and API Industry, as an author, lecturer, consultant and investor in the API tooling space. His industry research includes publishing and maintaining the API Industry Landscape and the yearly State of Banking APIs. In 2018, he published as co-author “Continuous API management” (O’Reilly) and begasn as lecturer and invited professor at HEC MBA and EMLyon Executive MBA. In 2019, Mehdi became a H2020 European Commission expert to lead the APIS4Dgov study on public sector and government APIs. As an entrepreneur, in 2014, Mehdi co-founded OAuth.io, an API middleware for OAuth intégration used by 40,000+ developers that was acquired in 2017. Mehdi’s new venture GDPR.dev develops a personal data API framework and protocol to democratize data regulations usage for mass users and compliance for applications developers, making GDPR programmable.

Célya Gruson-Daniel

is a research-practitioner and consultant at inno3, a consulting firm specializing in open models (open data, open source, commons, open science). Her research projects concern the modes of appropriation of sustainable open models within institutes and organizations through the study and implementation of different possible levers (organizational, legal, economic, technical). As a doctor of social sciences, she frequently intervenes as a teacher in various research and higher education institutes to train in digital methodologies (data collection, analysis, management) through a pragmatic and participative approach. She co-founded the HackYourResearch collective in order to create a space for sharing and exchanging on the evolution of research and open science practices.

Benjamin Jean

is currently the inno3 company’s CEO, an open innovation consulting firm focused on digital transformation through IP, management and ecosystem strategies. He is also the cofounder and former president of Open Law* Le droit ouvert, a french non-profit organization promoting activities to enhance the transformation of the legal sector through digital co- creation programs based on Open data, Open Source and Open Innovation principles. He also works as lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, teaches IP in several Masters courses and is a consultant within the Gilles Vercken Law firm. He co-found and co-organizes the annual European Opensource and free software Law Event.

Mark Boyd

is an API industry analyst and writer. Mark is the founder of Platformable, which specializes in using data and building tools to support the development of open ecosystems. He is the lead author of the European Commission’s API Framework for Digital Government, and has worked globally with World Bank, World Health Organization, UN agencies, private companies and non-profits on API and data governance, platform thinking, and open ecosystem strategy and best practices.
We would like to thank all those who participated in this project through our interviews, questionnaire responses, and/or participation in our workshop on “New models for API Terms of Service”.
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APIToS

API Terms of Service : FACT - Digital Infrastructure Grants - 2023