CAS, DUNS and LOD (was Re: Cost/Benefit Anyone? Re: Vote for my Semantic Web presentation at SXSW)

Hi all,

On Aug 19, 2011, at 06:37, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Case in point, CAS, http://www.cas.org/. Coming up on 62 million organic and inorganic substances given unique identifiers. What is the incentive for any of their users/customers to switch to Linked Data?

Well, for one thing, CAS (like DUNS) identifiers are proprietary.  They can't be reused for the purposes of identification in non-licensed systems.  That causes no end of trouble for researchers, government agencies and corporations who have bought into those proprietary identification schemes only to find out that they can't reuse the identifiers in new contexts.

An example is the US Environmental Protection Agency, who uses CAS numbers.  They cannot reuse those identifiers when they publish open government data.  They are not thrilled about that.  The EPA is now publishing their own identifiers.  How long will CAS last as a "standard"?  How many ids has the Encyclopedia of Life developed?  Or Wikipedia?

DUNS numbers, another widely used proprietary identification scheme, are very similar.  Orgpedia [1] and similar approaches are and have been started just to break the deadlock of that scheme.

Face it:  People just hate being boxed in.  Sure, you can make a business model out of doing so, but don't expect anyone to love you for it.  The Web allows people to think about not boxing themselves in.  That is a direct threat to those older and less friendly business models, DUNS and CAS included.

Regards,
Dave

[1] http://dotank.nyls.edu/ORGPedia.html