Having worked as a developer for several large retailers I have inevitably pondered whether a public API would be of any value to either the developer community or the business itself. The Gallery[1] offers a small number of use cases but I still have trouble grasping how upper management, as forward thinking as they may be, would see any ROI for the time and effort required to establish and maintain such a large, brittle piece of software. Not to mention the risks of potentially providing tools for competitive advantage to others in the electronics space (however few there may be nowadays) or a security slip of some kind.
At any rate, kudos to the team for trying to move the industry forward.