69 percent of software metadata vocabulary covered by existing work

69 percent of software metada…

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Published on: 08/05/2012 News Archived

Today, the RDF Schema of the ADMS.F/OSS v0.3 sofware metadata vocabulary was released for public review. An anlysis of the properties and classes in the RDF Schema learns that 69 percent of the conceptual model is covered by existing work. This percentage is expected to increase after the public review process.

ADMS.F/OSS is a metadata vocabulary to describe free and open-source software (F/OSS) assets, making it possible to more easily explore, find, and link software assets on the Web. The current version of ADMS.F/OSS (version 0.3) was elaborated from January till April by a multidisciplinary Working Group of 45 people from 14 different countries and will be open for public comments till June 2 2012.

Why is reuse so important?

When exchanging information about open-source software projects, assets and distributions on the Web it is extremely beneficial when information provider uses the same terms to denote the same meaning. Semantic technologies such as RDF allow combining the bits and pieces of existing vocabularies in an information exchange. This flexibility caters for reuse and maximises interoperability.

What exactly has been reused?

The ADMS.F/OSS Working Group aims at maximally reusing existing specifications.The table below gives an overview of the RDF properties and classes that currently occur in the RDF Schema. 22 out of 68 properties and 4 out of 15 classes with namespace prefix admsf: (http://purl.org/adms/foss/) are new and are explictly defined in the ADMS.F/OSS v0.3 RDF Schema. All the other class and properties in the conceptual model have been mapped to existing work, including among others:

Dublin core metadata element set (dcterms:): 14 properties and 2 classes of the Dublin core metadata vocabuary were reused. These include fundamental properties like dcterms:licence, dcterms:format, or dcterms:publisher.
Description of a Project (doap:): the specification sublcasses the doap:Project and doap:Version classes and resues 8 of its properties. Reuse is expected to increase as the conceptual model does not account for all features available in DOAP.
RDF Data Cube (qb:): to exchange (multidimensional) software metrics, the ADMS.F/OSS specification includes a hook to the RDF Data Cube vocabulary, and defines an number of software metrics using this vocabulary.
hooks to other vocabularies: The specification also provides hooks to other commonly used vocabularies such as vCard, FOAF, and SKOS, without restrictions on domains and ranges of properties.

The statistics do not account for the reuse of controlled vocabularies. Here the ADMS.F/OSS benefits from the studies done by the Spanish F/OSS Competence Centre CENATIC and the fact that SourceForge, represented in the Working Group, has recently made available its Trove software map under the CC by licence.

How can you help?

We kindly invite you to contribute to this specification by submitting your comments:

1. Download the ADMS.F/OSS v0.3 Specification from the Joinup platform; and

2. Comment* the ADMS.F/OSS v0.3 Specification by using the ADMS.F/OSS public review forum topic (registration on Joinup required).

*Please indicate in your comment as precisely as possible to which part of the specification your comment applies.

What happens with your feedback?

All comments and feedback received will be registered as issues and discussed with the Working Group in June. Resolutions of those issues will be shared on Joinup, and will lead to a final version of the specification that will be submitted for endorsement by the EU Member States.

To know more

ADMS.F/OSS v0.3 – ADMS.F/OSS v0.3
ADMS.F/OSS – Asset Description Metadata Schema for Software
RADion – Repsitory, Asset, Distribution
ADMS – Asset Description Metadata Schema

References

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/adms_foss/description

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