2012Q2: Grant Proposal: Perl module for Linked Data

Category: Grants

Comments (2)


I'm glad to hear that there is an active Perl community for Semantic Web technologies and I hope that Perl continues to be at the forefront.

That said, I see two yellow flags with this grant request.

First up are the opening inchstones ('Learn sufficient Perl' .. 'Get an idea of what can be done with Any::Moose'). That isn't what I think the grant fund should be used for -- that should be foundational pre-work before applying for a grant.

The second yellow flag is that an "active" community can't find manpower to accomplish the inch stones independently and feel a very modest grant will make the difference. If this is important and useful and in demand, I don't understand why it hasn't already been written, particularly if there is already a PHP module to use as a basis for the work.


David,

Thanks for the important comments. Basically, Semantic Web is by many seen as an academic endeavor, and to some extent it is, as the community here is driven by academics on their spare time. There's not a lot of users beyond ourselves at this time, even though many aspects of Semantic Web is taking off in the Enterprise. Enterprisey stuff doesn't make the Semantic Web however, what we really want is the wide deployment amongst a large number of developers. The way I see it, completing a useable Perl stack is a key factor in making the Semantic Web take off outside of academia and the Enterprise. So, there's only so much we can do as academics, this is not research, it is spare time work. Doing this is pretty straightforward, it could be done in a few days, the trouble is that none of us has a few days to spare.

That's why every hand matters, and that's why we are so happy Tope stepped up to do this bit. The Perl he needs to learn is not a lot, so it is not a risk factor. I think of it as a good opportunity to recruit another good person to our community. I hope TPF can help us do that.


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