Since Swagger‘s creation in 2011, we’ve seen phenomenal uptake of Swagger in the API community. From startups to enterprises alike, Swagger has become a common word with both REST APIs and integration architecture. We are proud to have brought frictionless development between architects, API devs, client devs, and documentation—even the company of one!
Fast forward a few years and several thousand espressos, we see Swagger actively supported in nearly every programming language, and deployed across tens-of-thousands of servers. Thanks to you, Swagger is far and away the clear leader in the API description landscape. We have accomplished this by being completely open source, transparent about our plans and goals, and most importantly by being vendor neutral. The official Swagger tools are downloaded 7,000 times a day now! And after Microsoft’s recent announcement of Swagger support across their Azure services and tooling (see the March Azure Announcement), this will increase even more rapidly.
Despite our passion and dedication for Swagger over the last several years, Swagger has outgrown Reverb. We need to guide Swagger to its next phase of growth with more resources and focus on the API space (Reverb stays plenty busy with its publisher products!) while staying true to the transparent and open-source nature that has enabled us to grow so quickly. That said, I’m both proud and excited that SmartBear has stepped up to officially lead the Swagger project!
Why SmartBear?
A change has been in the makings for the last few months. During that period, I’ve spent a lot of time talking with potential Swagger partners. With such wide industry adoption, there’s intense interest in keeping Swagger a common standard for API descriptions. Being the “glue” between services is certainly a privilege, but comes with a great responsibility to the industry. We had to ensure that the open spirit is accelerated with our partner.
We’ve been working with SmartBear for several years now. In addition to being an important yet neutral vendor in the API space, they have a track record with open source with their industry-leading SoapUI project. Critical to the success of Swagger, both past and future, has been the open attitude to both the spec and the source. SmartBear has not only a solid grasp of APIs and their importance, but with SoapUI, they are connecting to both small shops with their OSS version as well as providing support for enterprises with Pro versions.
This is where Swagger will continue its path. Both the Swagger specification—the connective tissue for the API—and the tooling will remain completely open source. SmartBear is in fact pushing the openness of Swagger forward to the next level by engaging industry leaders to establish an open governance model for the Swagger specification. The benefits of a common and shared standard in API description has proven to be invaluable, and we don’t intend to take that for granted.
Expect great things to come in this next stage of growth for Swagger. We want APIs everywhere, and to enable the developer to focus on making great products, not API plumbing.
If you have any questions for the Swagger team, please reach out to apiteam@swagger.io! Thank you for all your support, and look forward to the next stage of Swagger’s growth!
