Beyond httpRange-14 addiction

After years of armed peace we get another round of this old debate. Everybody says it's enough and they don't want to hear about it any more but nobody can resist the temptation to jump in once again. Trying to follow the various running threads about it, with cross-postings and forkings is a pain. Nevertheless I added my pinch of salt yesterday, without much feedback so far, except from Mike Bergman who in a personal answer suggests I should turn this into (yet another) formal change proposal. Suggestion much appreciated, coming from a man with one of the deepest understanding of the issue, and thinking along lines similar to the ones developed here for years. That said,  not sure I want to add to the noise, and not sure such a proposal would gain much traction. Moreover the deadline of the call for proposals is now pretty close (only two days). And actually what I have in mind currently would not amend the current "httpRange-14 resolution", but proposes a radical move to escape the non-issues net in which it is entangled.

LOV stories, Part 2 : Gardeners and Gatekeepers

In the previous post, we have seen why Linked Open Vocabularies should be managed following the principles and rules of the commons : shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest. 

Which means that in theory at least, all stakeholders of the commons should be both users and gardeners. In the vocabularies commons the stakeholders (and hence potential gardeners) are as various as can be, actually they encompass all the actual or potential providers, curators or users of linked data, since there is no quality linked data without quality linked vocabularies, as we have explained in a recent post. But let's look at who are the actual current gardeners of the vocabulary commons.

LOV stories, Part 1 : The Commons

It's now been about one year of work with my colleague Pierre-Yves Vandenbussche on the Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) project. I've already mentioned it lately here on this blog and in various conversations on Google+. This is the first on a series of posts where I will elaborate a little more about the general vision and philosophy of this project, lessons learned so far, and explore possible roadmap towards its sustainable future. 

The philosophy of LOV in a nutshell is the Philosophy of the Commons.

On usage of empty fridges

It's been a while since we've not revisited here our favourite Tao Te Ching chapter, the one from which the title of this blog is derived. Yesterday I found it was a mandatory answer to Danny Ayers' post on Google+, quoting a quite old (2003) but still relevant post by Dan Brickley "Missing is not broken". Worth re-reading indeed, as well as Danny's comment : an empty fridge is still a fridge. And even more useful so according to 老子. The usage of a fridge is allowed by this very emptiness. Whoever came back once from the supermarket to find the fridge already full has understood that a full fridge is useless until you start to empty it. Granted, by Laozi times, fridges and supermarkets were barely concepts, but useful empty clay pots did the trick.