Thanks for the concise, provocative post, Mike! There is an old marketing adage that says, “Perception is…all there is!” and yours is a legitimate sampling of the perceptions of those who haven’t (yet…) drunk the #LinkedData Kool-Aid! 😉

I would like to challenge you on your Linked Data vs. API assertion. Having constructed a few over the years AND having engaged in ensuing political battles over their design, I would argue that (a) good APIs are (also?) hard, and (b) by adopting Sir Tim’s core principles, the remaining interoperability problem is “simply” one of establishing data relationships.

In my view, the top “competitor” to the linked data approach in the open data space is not access via API, but rather the downloading of CSV files. Why? Because virtually any data store can export and ingest CSV, because it is relatively easy to create code (script or otherwise) to parse into one’s current model, and it is bog simple to point, click and download.

In my view, the value of the linked data approach is to make the datasets easier to find and easier to access with a minimum of source-specific coding.