[sadcodemonkey]

For a site that caters to a startup and entrepreneurial crowd, it's hilarious the number of comments here that amount to "tough cookies, bud" and "Yelp can do whatever they want, and because they can, you should just shut up."

They miss the spirit of this blog post entirely, which is to point out the overt hostility to and powerlessness of API users. That should be concerning to anyone working on projects that use APIs, which is, um... almost everyone, these days.

[Aurornis]

> which is to point out the overt hostility to and powerlessness of API users. That should be concerning to anyone working on projects that use APIs, which is, um... almost everyone, these days.

Not everyone. Business that build on top of other company's APIs will arrange contracts with their API providers. Those contracts generally include warning periods for changes or discontinuation and penalties for early termination.

The key here is that it was a free API with no contract or guarantees. Four days is short notice and frustrating, but it wouldn't have really changed the trajectory of his business if they had given him 180 days. If he didn't intend to pay for the API, he couldn't really sell an app that was going to stop working in a few months.

So I know we're supposed to be angry about the 4 days thing. It's not good, obviously. However, I don't think it actually changes the situation at all if he wasn't going to sign up anyway.

[WoodenChair]

> So I know we're supposed to be angry about the 4 days thing. It's not good, obviously. However, I don't think it actually changes the situation at all if he wasn't going to sign up anyway.

As I said in the post and comments here if it made financial sense and they gave me a more reasonable deadline with a less threatening email I would be willing to pay for the API. In this case it didn't make financial sense, so you're right at the current API prices it wouldn't make sense even with 6 months-notice.

That said, 6-months (your suggested time period) is a much better grace period for our shared users (users of Restaurants who use it as a frontend and continue to read more reviews at Yelp.com) and much more likely to make me convert to a paid API customer if it had made financial sense.

[Aurornis]

> and much more likely to make me convert to a paid API customer if it had made financial sense

I don't understand. Are you saying that even if it did make financial sense, you would have voluntarily shut the app down in protest of the 4-day notice period? Even though the sales rep pointed you toward the free trial option to continue using the API beyond the 4 days while you decided?

I know you're angry and want us all to be angry at Yelp too, but I have a difficult time believing that anyone would choose to destroy a profitable application out of protest just to stick it to the company about a short notice period.

[WoodenChair]

> I don't understand. Are you saying that even if it did make financial sense, you would have voluntarily shut the app down in protest of the 4-day notice period? Even though the sales rep pointed you toward the free trial option to continue using the API beyond the 4 days while you decided?

An app that sold 467 copies over 10 years at less than $5 a copy is not worth the trouble of dealing with a company that gives you Friday->Monday ultimatums. Obviously, if it were a big source of my income I would have to seriously consider it. But luckily, it's not. I discussed this in the "Development Ends" section of the post. Here is the pricing deck they sent me: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cb_8laDpxZdfwJPtYBmibZgvLZ8...

It seems to indicate a $229 base monthly price on the third slide for my use case.

> I know you're angry and want us all to be angry at Yelp too, but I have a difficult time believing that anyone would choose to destroy a profitable application out of protest just to stick it to the company.

I'm sorry you're reading so much anger in my post. I thought my blog post was pretty balanced. The worst I called them is "quite rude" (I think it's hard to read their emails otherwise) and spent the first half of it describing my app. I never expressed much emotion in my post, and frankly as mentioned above it really doesn't matter in the scheme of things for my life. What I do want is Yelp to change the way it treats developers. Perhaps if someone there reads this it will cause a tiny reflection on their part. I also hope the experience here expressed in the "Lessons Learned" section of the post is useful to other indie developers.

[sadcodemonkey]

Both your neutral tone and the fact that you want Yelp and other big companies to treat developers better were very clear!

That's what's crazy to me about all these comments. What does it say that so many developers have glossed over this simple ask for more considerate and respectful treatment for THEMSELVES? What does it say that the knee jerk response is fatalism to whatever big tech does?

[WoodenChair]

Thank you. It's actually just a couple users who have posted multiple negative comments in this thread like gp. Not sure what nerve my blog post hit with them but they are free to not like it! It seems like they're more upset about my blog post than I am about the actual situation.

[yreg]

True, but that developer had zero chance to get Yelp to sign any such contract.

Just as I have zero chance of getting Apple to sign that they won't remove my app if they feel like it.

[burningChrome]

>> I don't think it actually changes the situation at all if he wasn't going to sign up anyway.

This is kind of the salient point.

Either you test on the free API and plan on paying for access slightly before its ready to go live, or you try the "free lunch" approach and see if you can get one by the tendy and see how long you can go before you get shut down and have to pony up the money.

Either way. they should've had the cost of the API in their budget.

We should all know by now. . . . nobody rides for free.

[WoodenChair]

> Either way. they should've had the cost of the API in their budget.

There was no cost to the API ten years ago. I submitted a prototype of my app to their developer program, described its functionality and exchanged a few emails back and forth with someone in developer relations. They specifically approved it and decided how many API calls to give me. A paid API didn't exist back then to my knowledge (perhaps there was some kind of enterprise API but I don't know?). The point of the post is how badly Yelp handled the transition from free to paid. They are perfectly in their right to transition to paid. But they should've handled the emails and transition better.

As mentioned in the post I developed the app on a whim. But after 10 years, it had a few users, although not many. They and I should have received more than a few days notice from Yelp that the API was going to become unsustainable (see my comments elsewhere in this thread).

[bastardoperator]

I hear you, but this story keeps happening over and over and over. The reality is once these companies have you and your product by the balls, they will start squeezing. You can pay money to reduce the pressure, or leave and not be squeezed. I would argue using an unpaid API takes you into the unknown with considerable risk.

[Veuxdo]

> That should be concerning to anyone working on projects that use APIs

Well, free APIs anyway. If you are paying for API access, you hopefully have a contract which gives you power.

[dual_dingo]

Even if you pay, most likely you have a contract that effectively gives you close to no power because it's full of conditions favoring the service provider and trying to use the little power you have will be expensive because laywers and courts get involved.

[umanwizard]

Almost everyone is working on projects that “use APIs” in some general sense, sure. But I don’t think it’s the case that all or even most people are working on a project that entirely depends on a single third party’s API and is useless without it.

[pvg]

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[anigbrowl]

They miss the spirit of this blog post entirely, which is to point out the overt hostility to and powerlessness of API users.

Or, they completely get it but they work for large platforms that leverage API access commercially or strategically, so their response to unruly peasants is to figuratively chop their heads off.

[WoodenChair]

Thanks—yeah I actually think they mostly just didn't read the whole post since I addressed this in detail in the last two bold sections "Development Ends" and "Lessons Learned."

[lmm]

> They miss the spirit of this blog post entirely, which is to point out the overt hostility to and powerlessness of API users. That should be concerning to anyone working on projects that use APIs, which is, um... almost everyone, these days.

This has been known for like 20 years now. We all know that if you're relying on someone else's API that's a massive risk to your business. What more is there to say at this point? What sympathy is there to give when the inevitable happens?