OSD Database Downloadable As XML

After taking some heat a few months ago for not having many products listed, the Open Source Directory has been plugging away. Steve Mallett writes: "We made the product database of Open-Source Directory downloadable in XML today. Announcement here at newsforge. We're hoping that people begin to use the data like google uses dmoz. More people see the data, which increases awareness of open-source which increases the database which gets more people to display the data etc, etc ... You get the point."

Providing a list of applications stable enough to recommend to non-gurus is a worthy endeavor, so it's great to see this project slowly becoming more useful. There are gaps to plug going forward, though. The default text strings can be ambiguous, and the information provided on individual projects doesn't always give much to go on. For instance, look at the Mosix page, where you'll find that "This product has no Latest version yet," "This product doesn't fix anything," and "This product is not like any other," but no email contact information for Mosix authors. Similarly ambiguous pages are provided for Gnucleus and OpenOffice.

I exchanged some email with Steve on the state of the entries in the database, and asked about how the missing information could be filled in. He told me that while project maintairers (and site administrators) are the only ones who can update entries, users can contact the administrators of individual projects directly through the OSD site to suggest changes or clarification.

"We're trying to make things easier for the maintainers. ... I think there is a serious lack of product maintainers to help authors," he said. To that end, Mallet may soon provide example projects for software authors to emulate, and is in the early stages of a unified project-listing tool which would update listings on various web sites. Given the number of sites that offer downloads or simply track various software projects, that could be a boon to developers.

Hopefully, this will turn into the sort of tool that you can show a boss or teacher to answer the bugaboo of Free / Open Source being unready for prime time (or just overwhelming and undifferentiated).

Comments

embedding ODP (& OSD) content in your web site...

[VValdo]

What is the consensus on the best way to include Open Directory Project (ODP/dmoz) content in your web site, say for a mini-portal (or in the case of OSD, for a mini software directory)? I dont' want to simply download/display dmoz's RDF/XML file on a weekly basis because (1) I'm only interested in a tiny portion of the ODP which relates to my web site and (2) I'd like to encourage people to be uploading new content back to dmoz, so I'm looking for a way to pull "live" content from dmoz and let my visitors send links back to dmoz.

Is there a PHP class or something that everyone's using for this? I saw a couple offerings at freshmeat that relates to ODP and some some tools and code are here, but I'm curious what most people are using.

W
-------------------

Gripe -lousy directory due to dictatorial policies

[DamnYankee]

I was one of the original category editors of DMOZ way back when it started and long before the AOL bureacrats took over. I was really dedicated to my two small categories - paragliding and paramotoring - and built them up from scratch. Shortly after AOL took over I suddenly found myself locked out as a category editor. After repeated inquiries as to why, it turns out that I had listed some non-English web sites on my "English only" categories and this was against AOL policy hence an immediate boot.

The real shame was watching the categories I created with TLC lie fallow for months and months without any one to update them.

With inane policies like these is it any wonder that this directory lacks up-to-date information and is in general disarray? Me thinks not.

I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "I drank what?"

Re:Somewhat amusing

[Arandir]

Linux may be the most "prominent" example of Open Source, but the three pieces of Open Source work that are actually the most used are not listed either. Perl, Apache and XFree86.

The OSD is not meant to be a definitive archive. It's mission is to provide a resource for users. I think it has a done a good job in this regard.

How do they validate the entries?

[antibryce]

I use my computer to write music, so I went to see their listing of stable audio software. The only things listed there are a crossfade plugin for xmms, GLAME and a soundfont editor. I've tried GLAME. Listing it as "stable" is a joke. And to top it all off, they have these things listed multiple times in categories they shouldn't be in. I'm fairly certain a soundfont editor doesn't qualify as "sound synthesis".

I want to stress I'm not trying to discredit the GLAME team or any of these software packages. But what good is OSD if it's categories are a mess? I might as well just use freshmeat.

c.

Re:How do they validate the entries?

[blab]

It is really a product's admin to be truthful. However; our Social Contract outlines that while it is their responsibility (we can't test them all) the interest of the directory are primary. If it sucks & there is no way its stable, write to the admin & tell him so.

Ultimately the info is open for catching bugs like this one. If it is a bug it will get weeded out.

-Steve Mallett of OSD

Great idea, but maybe not best approach.

[pjbass]

I'm all for OSD, and means for making it easier to search, read about, and acquire apps. However, the people that would most likely find this searchable database are the people who already know how to search other OSD networks, like sourceforge and freshmeat. I can only see this, by itself, is going to confuse people more with multiple area to get the same software, but possibly at different versioning levels, in comparison to freshmeat and sourceforge. Maybe if this list was synced somehow with the freshmeat lists, that might provide a very powerful tool for people new and experienced to the Open Source world to get, play with, learn, upgrade, hack, and love Open Source. IMHO though...

unified project-listing tool

[blab]

The "unified project-listing tool" refered too above is at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/trovesendtwo/ The idea is: you put the information for your product in a client & it updates SF/FM and or OSD at the same time without having to login & change all those listings. This is possible because, all these sites anyway, are based on loosely the same interface, data & category map. And yes, we could use some assistance with it!

-Steve Mallett of OSD

Re:That document is not valid XML! Standards? Anyo

[jhol]

Not only that it is not valid, the XML structure is not very logical either.

The authors of the XML file has written it like this:

<group_name></group_name>
<--properties of group-->
<group_name></group_name>
<--properties of group-->

whereas a more clever structure would have been:

<group>
<group_name></group_name>
<--properties of group-->
</group>

This way the different groups would have been separated in a more logical manner, and it would be "easier" to parse the information in the XML file.

perhaps a bit off topic

[sehryan]

but xml was not designed to replace databases. to store everything in an xml format is a bad idea. you store it in a database, and pass the variables into an xml document, then parse that with an xsl or xhtml. xml is a transport, not a storage.
-
sean

Fixed XML Files

[azaroth42]

Here's a valid XML file and DTD:
http://www.o-r-g.org/~cheshire/osd/osd.tgz

Also, a search engine (Cheshire2) running over the XML with a Very simple interface/display is available at:
http://www.o-r-g.org/~cheshire/osd/

Enjoy =)

-- Azaroth