I don't necessarily agree with the idea of declaring something a national treasure but the problem of companies screwing around with APIs is a big one, and it is probably better solved by having developers group together in some way to get better bargaining power against companies who do it.
The whole bait-and-switch method that a lot of large companies have employed in the past is unfair, and it usually involves companies enticing developers to pour huge amounts of resources into building on their platform, only to pull the rug out from underneath them and clamp down on API terms or ban applications (see Twitter with API tokens, Facebook with Social Reader etc).
It would probably be better if developers got together and threatened to pull all their apps off an ecosystem unless companies negotiated in good faith, even if only a small subset of developers stood to get screwed over. It's a principle which works quite well for unions aside from when they take it too far. Hopefully it wouldn't skew the balance too far either way, but it would definitely make negotiations bilateral instead of unilateral and result in a much fairer deal for developers.
The whole bait-and-switch method that a lot of large companies have employed in the past is unfair, and it usually involves companies enticing developers to pour huge amounts of resources into building on their platform, only to pull the rug out from underneath them and clamp down on API terms or ban applications (see Twitter with API tokens, Facebook with Social Reader etc).
It would probably be better if developers got together and threatened to pull all their apps off an ecosystem unless companies negotiated in good faith, even if only a small subset of developers stood to get screwed over. It's a principle which works quite well for unions aside from when they take it too far. Hopefully it wouldn't skew the balance too far either way, but it would definitely make negotiations bilateral instead of unilateral and result in a much fairer deal for developers.