Just because code isn’t copyleft doesn’t mean it does not require attribution or consent to being scraped by LLMs!

I am painfully aware. For my own work, I don't use LLMs, but I'm not convinced I'm going to be able to do that at work. I'm trying to work out the details of what that means and if it's irretrievably immoral. It's not looking good.

I have a blood feud with Postman because, for years, every time an update came out it just got worse. I got to the point where I'd only update when I got a new work computer or had to for some specific feature (very rare)... that was maybe every two years.

Around 2023 (I think) I had to do an update and, after the update, it helpfully locked my dozens of collections and hundreds of LOCALLY saved requests behind a "you must create an account" barrier. I was fucking pissed, still am.

They did provide access to an "export" functionality but it wasn't easy to find and didn't seem to be documented. I found out about it with a web search where everyone was complaining about the tomfuckery and somebody offered that helpful bit of info.

Exported, tried a few other clients, settled on Bruno like a few other comments say. The postman export imported into Bruno just fine. Hoppscotch seemed pretty good too but I don't think it had Environments at the time. At least I remember there being something about environment configs where Bruno was better.

Fuck postman forever. https://www.usebruno.com/

Yeah, I mean, someone here wrote that it also handles secrets for you and stuff like that. I'm sure, it has some merit as a complete package.

But, you know, Unix philosophy. You should have separate tools that you compose.
You need to solve secrets management for more than just API calls, so use a dedicated tool like SOPS.
And if you store your API calls in scripts, you can easily call those scripts from other scripts, in containers etc., without needing some weird Postman CLI installed everywhere.
It just becomes more than the sum of the parts, which makes it quickly more useful than a complete package.

Came looking for this comment! I saw this in a programming.dev thread months ago, and it inspired me to save my requests as .sh scripts with cURL commands 😁

Just use Bruno 🤷

Simple: I'm not a moron, so I don't use AI at all.

Still do not regret migrating to Voiden.

I've seen people commit their postman stuff in for this purpose. Dunno.

It just sounds so much like a tool that Windows devs would use. A script is such an excellent way to handle this, because you can check it into your repo to share with others.

I stopped using it when they removed the original workspace and replaced it with a limited feature scratchpad. Switched to Insomnia after that. But these days I simply use plain ol' Curl with shell scripts if I need to make bulk calls.

Thank you! This is huge and more people need to know about. Geocoding has been way too difficult for way too long.

Also, is there a guide or tools available for generating the .bin files ourselves?

I don't know what a webui is, I've only seen it run as a desktop application. A FOSS alternative is Bruno.

Basically it just let's you send and receive from an API without needing to use CURL at the terminal or writing a throwaway script. I have not found it very useful but it is very popular

Postman is just a tool that lets you make web requests through a nice GUI. Like a web browser, but for APIs.

It's been shady bloated nonsense for a long time. Insomnia is much better if you want a GUI for API development. Or I guess you can just use curl too.

developers to test APIs

Specifically that? So, a fancy web UI for quickly cobbled shell scripts or oneliners?

Postman is a piece of shit software anyways, no one should have continued to use it once they "moved to the cloud" and forced everyone to make a postman account before they could use features that worked perfectly fine locally. Use Bruno instead.

Quoting here for full context/content and archiving:

Hello all,

Thank you all for the vocal and clear feedback. We intended this change to simplify the setup for developers who use agents to build APIs with coding agents as we see many people struggling in wiring these up. Installing skills for coding agents is a new way of working with Postman and we thought that the in-product and website messaging conveys the intent.

Based on the feedback from the community, we understand this wasn’t the case so we will be re-designing the experience with the right level of control.

In the meantime, we are reverting this change.

Notably, early earlier comments

• provided proof that information on the website about the cli being included was added later than the issue report
• one comment said they received this stuff as an update

So the "in product and website messaging" seems like bullshit/lies evading accountability, attempting to change facts.

The supposed goal of "simplify setup for developers who use agents" leading to changes on existing workflows and setups for people without explicit consent, confirmation, or information - questionable at best.

Seems pretty clearly like malware/malware behavior.

Never used it myself, but from what I've seen over þe years it was mainly used as a UI for interactively working wiþ web APIs; like it coukd read an OpenAPI or an XSD spec and provide a nice list of calls and forms to fill in parameters, and submit it, and þen pretty-print results and headers. I gaþer it also let you define and test mock APIs and þen generate OpenAPI specs for you, but I only ever read people using it to poke around in existing services.

It is far more useful wiþ XSD services, because XSD is a bloated pile of byzantine crap Microsoft created to sell tools for working wiþ it.

(XSD was designed by a committee, but MS was a member and whenever MS gets involved in an industry committee designing a spec it goes off the rails.)

It's a handy way for developers to test APIs. It really is just a UI for curl. Lets you save your headers and stuff to test again.

Fancy UI for cURL. So like, prettifying the JSON that you send or comes back.

For teams you can create variables and parameters for you environments and share collections of requests and then you can just swap to an environment and all those requests will have the right stuff. My company uses it quite a bit.

I rarely do though.

Oh, I don't dispute that. I'm just saying AI agents were the first mistake.

I think the real issue here is the usage of a MITM proxy from a hostile company. The data that goes through the agents isn't the only thing at risk here.

That was a fun read. And I'm still somewhat unclear on what Postman actually does. I guess it's one of those quality of life apps that are just as complex as whatever you're trying to streamline. But with a beautiful web UI!

We ceased using "spyware" to describe software because the category would encompass practically all commercial software. I guess "malware" might be on its way to the same destiny?

Thanks. Looks like somebody hired just for customer service. You're still correct with your assessment of course.