[okfn-discuss] freebase: another new open knowledge/open data service

Tue Mar 13 13:56:58 UTC 2007

Francis Irving wrote:
> I say you don't do a simple link back, but instead make a blog post
> about Freebase, what state it is in, and how good it might be.
 >
> It looks potentially very very good, exactly the kind of thing we
> need.

It certainly looks interesting though as I posted on Glyn Moody's blog:

<quote>
... I completely agree with you here that a massively centralized system 
is probably not the best way to go. As I wrote in
Four Principles of Open Knowledge Development I think it is clear that 
we should learn from software and be aiming to develop componentized 
packages that we can then plug together to make larger systems.

At the same time we are badly in need of tools that allows us to 
collaboratively develop structured information and not just unstructured 
text (which we already do fairly successfully with wikis and scm tools) 
-- something I recently wrote at some length about. In that respect I'd 
be actually more interested in to see the freebase code that the 
freebase data (looking at the site while it seems the data will be open 
it's not at all clear whether the code will also be open).
</quote>

> (On a more site-critical point, I couldn't even get to the FAQ without
> it asking me to login. Which is a bit dumb - you should be able to
> download data at least without a login.)

Yes it seems quite 'closed' for such an open project -- maybe they are 
worried about their server melting or just want to create that 'you are 
on of the select' feeling by having limited access.

> Regarding licensing, I don't know anything about law, but perhaps as
> well as the Copy Right it is possible to license out the Database
> Right :)

This is an important point but as Rob says more on this I'll reply in 
that mail rather than here.

~rufus