Independent, and I have thought about the edges of that carefully for a long time — including publicly, about the discomfort of taking money from companies I also write about.
The specific commitments. The rating rubric is public, versioned, and has a changelog, so anyone can check how a score was produced and argue with the method rather than guessing at motive. Scores are computed from public artifacts, not from relationships. API Evangelist’s own properties — including APIs.io — are entries in the catalog, scored under the same rubric, with no exemption. Research is not sponsored; the papers are bought by readers, not underwritten by the companies they cover. And corrections are evidence-based in both directions: a company asking for a better score gets a fetch and a status code, not a favor.
Where money does come from: the papers, and paid engagements where I do actual work for an organization — profiling, scoring, governance, remediation. Those engagements do not change how that organization is scored, because the score comes from their public surface and anyone can recompute it.
None of that makes the writing neutral. It is opinionated on purpose. What it should be is checkable, and that is the standard I would want you to hold it to.
