GerardM wrote:
You deny the argument for Wikicat to need Wikidata. I
wonder
what you base this on. It is given what it aims to do perfectly
reasonable.
For WiktionaryZ you needed two things: Wikidata and some free
contents to fill it, which you found in the GEMET vocabulary.
For Wikicat, perhaps it could be based on Wikidata or perhaps on
some other technical solution, but it also needs contents, and
this contents needs to be free (as in freedom). The dump of the
database must be possible to download and reuse for other
purposes. My point is that we currently don't have that kind of
content. What's lacking is not so much the technical platform, as
the contents. The most recent proposal ([[m:Wikicat]]) by Jleybov
is based on lifting catalog records from the Library of Congress
and other major libraries through a Z39.50 interface. I don't see
any contract with the LoC and other libraries that confirms that
these data can be reused for any purpose, and I don't see any
efforts being made to getting such contracts. Instead, on the
m:talk:Wikicat page, I see vague ideas about using data that are
available for educational non-profit purposes, and I personally
think that is quite insufficient. I don't think it is impossible
to solve the licensing issue, but I think it needs to be solved.
Just ignoring the legal issue is not good enough.
Whether Wikidata is ready for deployment or not, this is not
what's stopping Wikicat at this moment.
Could you talk to kb.nl and ask if their entire catalog can be
released into the public domain or under a useful license? That
would be a move similar to releasing the GEMET vocabulary, and
could provide the starting of Wikicat.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se