GraphQL Foundation rounds out membership, sketches out API landscape

GraphQL Foundation rounds out membership, sketches out API landscape

The GraphQL Foundation welcomed a lucky seven more members this week, as well as a programme director tasked with bolstering the community around the API technology.

GraphQL was first developed by Facebook in 2012, and open-sourced three years later. When the foundation launched last year, it said that in contrast to REST APIs, GraphQL APIs “allow developers to query the exact data they need from a diverse set of cloud data sources, with less code, greater performance and security, and a faster development cycle.”

So, it’s not a big surprise that the latest members include companies with a distinct leaning towards data. They include Fauna, the company behind FaunaDB, a serverless, low latency database and 8Base, which offers a development platform based on JavaScript and GraphQL.

New member Elementl, which aims to build “the next generation of open source data tools” was founded by Nick Schrock, who co-developed GraphQL while at Facebook. Also on the list is Prisma, which also develops data tools, and whose investors include…one Nick Schrock.

The seven are rounded out by ecommerce co Shopify, travel giant, Expedia, and Twitter.

As well as the new members, the GraphQL foundation also gets a programme director, in the shape of the Linux Foundation’s Brian Warner. Warner’s resume includes stints at IBM and Samsung, as well as a previous five year stretch at the Linux Foundation.

The new faces were unveiled as the foundation behind the API manipulation language launched GraphQL Landscape, a tool to help interested parties “explore” GraphQL projects, members and organisations.