Yes, I've heard about the API issue. I don't really care anymore. It's wasting Twitter's money to give free access to every dev, and yet they do anyway. If they want to set limits that's their issue. The only real downside I see is that if someone wants to use a FOSS Twitter client it might be harder.

Yes, I know Twitter grew because of these developers. But think about all the good Twitter does, sponsoring the Apache Foundation, not giving into the NSA, etc. They have much higher standards than most mainstream tech corps, imo.

Well, I suspect that most tech companies don't really want to give in to the NSA. Twitter have been better though, I do agree.

However, on the sponsorship of the Apache foundation, you may wish to peruse http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html for the list of sponsors. You'll note that Twitter are Bronze, while Goog and FB are Platinum (along with Microsoft, oddly enough).