jmcclure wrote: "And please mention how the wikidata community can be assured that the wikidata team's designs themselves don't infringe someone else's patent or copyright, a reassurance that would directly follow from MWF's purchase of rights to use an ISO standard."
May be someone can phone these people in Geneva and ask wether wikidata could at least base its ontology on the ISO Standard. (eventually by purchasing this right) phone number: http://www.iso.org/iso/copyright.htm in that way one would eventually not use their explicit texts and formats but could use at least their structural outline ? Allthough it would of course be better if the formats would be in accordance. The ISO funds itself with selling standards. May be some rich sponsor could buy their RDF classification and make it openly accessible? Whats the ISO opinion on that did someone check?
Commercial publishing and open access need not be automatically exclusive i.e. here one could eventually pay for an open access publication in order to prevent the ruin of the ISO.
by the way, whats MWF (mediawikifoundation?) and thanks to Fabian Suchanek for the explanations at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.wikidata/331