private data, public data, public information

If you have a pile of data, you have three choices:

1. Keep it private and gate-keep it. This is a cancer. The gate is an API that everyone hates. It uses JSON-over-HTTP and calls it REST and the docs are from before you fired your tech writers or generated by an LLM

2. Make if public, but make the person looking for something find it themselves. This is a charity shop. The pile has an API but you really need to know what you are looking for, the structure of the pile of data as well as the people piling it up, and the syntax of the API as well as the people who wrote it. The API is probably JSON-over-HTTP that really is REST, but could just as easily be XML or SPARQL or GraphQL or datalog.

3. Make it public and also curate, package, and refine it into information. This is a library. The packaged information is text (or csv or markdown or HTML). The API is RSS for information and the-most-beautifully-documented-multi-lingual-SDK-you’ve-ever-seen-that-makes-you-rush-to-the-keyboard-to-use-because-it-justifies-all-the-pain-and-suffering-you’ve-endured-dealing-with-those-other-two-kinds-of-data-piles-over-HTTP for data.