The paradox of the web is that it is fundamentally built on interoperability by way of hyperlinks, and yet that interoperability causes the web to crumble over time.

If you open a web page written five years ago or more you will like find hyperlinks to pages that no longer exist. As each strand of the web is cut it becomes less valuable.

Earlier this week Dave announced that due to Dropbox dropping support of an API, Fargo will stop working in 2017. Fargo uses Dropbox for storage. In my opinion the announcement further supports my observation of the web's fragility in several ways. Many people rely on Dropbox's free cloud storage, and being free it could go away at any time. 

Dropbox provides an Application Program Interface (API) that developers can use to write programs that communicate with Dropbox and read and write files stored in Dropbox. Dropbox freely supported this method for communications and apparently they have decided it costs them too much money to continue supporting, and so they have announced they will stop providing this interface. The consequence is that developers either need to find an alternative API or service, or do as Dave has done, and decide to stop supporting their applications. 

Again, the paradox is that APIs are not bad, nor is Dave wrong for making the decision he has made. In Dave's case, he had been planning for the demise of Dropbox's API by developing nodestorage, and the difference between 1999 and Fargo Publisher reflects an evolution of thinking and in that process features are added and subtracted. 

APIs are necessary to quickly develop new applications and services on the web by enabling one to building such services using prior work as building blocks. Using the Dropbox API meant that Dave did not have to create his own storage platform, and that enabled him to create Fargo as an independent developer. In fact, this is the story of how so many web apps can continue to be quickly made by small developers at very little financial expense.

The message is not that developers should not use APIs, but the story of Dropbox's API does highlight the risk in using any other entity's services. Consequently, the challenge is in determining the commitment of the entity providing the API over the long term.