Wow, a lot of articles about Aaron Swartz.
It’s weird that I just wrote an article about how using proprietary formats wasn’t so bad. Aaron helped writing the RSS 1.0 specs which I wish developers were building apps around instead of using Google’s Reader API which could be closed to developers anytime Google wants. We saw Twitter.
I feel like when they should use open, stable formats developers don’t and when they should probably help themselves with proprietary solutions, prefer to enter a world of pain by building these themselves.
At the end whatever you use to build apps and services, let the data flow. Monetize around but free access to information. It’s crucial.