[okfn-discuss] FreeTable: a public commons for open data

Tue Sep 6 11:57:59 UTC 2011

Thank you Gordon,

may be one remark - GFT gives somehow possibility to make join with look-up
tables but I did not try.

Alex

2011/9/6 Gordon Irlam <gordonipub2 at gordoni.com>

> Hi,
>
> Peter Murray-Rust:
>
> >
> > * what is the governance model of FreeTable?
>
> Right now it is just me.  I know this needs to be improved upon.  It
> isn't clear a non-profit structure would work since what FreeTable
> seeks to do doesn't seem to be one of the exempt purposes under the US
> non-profit act.  Another reason for wanting a more substantive form is
> the DMCA act safe harbor provisions don't appear available to
> individuals, so some for of non-profit or for profit form is needed.
>
> If there is anyone out there that might be interested in devoting a
> significant amoount of time to data gathering, operations, or the
> development of FreeTable, and would enjoy being on the board drop me a
> line.
>
>
> > * Is there anything to prevent it being closed in the future?
>
> Good point.  Would a commitment not to close it down without two years
> notice work?
>
>
> > * it has a charging model. How is this reconciled with Free?
>
> The charging model applies to high volume users, and is necessary
> because the operating costs are currently $500/month, and could
> easily exceed $2,000/month once the system is scaled up and additional
> fault tolerance built in.
>
> The Free in FreeTable refers to freedom.  All the data in it is
> available under a Open Knowledge Definition compliant license.  And
> the FreeTable software itself is available under the GNU Affero GPL.
>
>
> > * Are they any example data in FreeTable. Without this I have no idea of
> how to use it.
>
> Just to browse a table you could look at:
>
>    http://freetable.org/table/global.iana.tlds
>
> A tutorial covering how to interact with FreeTable programatically is
> online at:
>
>     http://freetable.org/doc/dev/tutorial
>
> Alex Shkotin:
>
> >
> > It would be nice to get a comparison with Google Fusion Tables.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, with corrections welcomed:
>
>                  FreeTable    Google Fusion         Factual
>                                   Tables
>
> governance         unclear       corporate      for profit startup
> data licensing  OKD compliant    unclear          commercial
> source code    GNU Affero GPL    proprietary      proprietary
> scalability         high            huge            high
> joins               no              no              no
> pricing at volume   yes             no              yes
> volume limits       no              yes             no?
> query format        SQL-like        SQL-like        proprietary
> data format         JSON            CSV             unknown
> wiki like           yes             no              no
> data sharing model  advanced        poor            unknown
> spatial data        no              yes             yes
> email data          yes             no              no
> fulltext search     yes             yes?            yes?
>
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