WG/Metadata and Linked Data
Charter
Mission
The Software Heritage archive collects the source code of software projects from a variety of origins. The same source code can be collected from different origins, each providing potentially complementary or conflicting metadata describing the project of which this source code is part, and the people that take part in it.
The goal of the MELD working group is to propose metadata schemas for appropriately describing the projects, and the people involved with source code stored in Software Heritage's software archive.
Duration
This working group has an initial duration of two years.
Expected outcomes
The main expected outcomes are listed below.
Metadata schemas for software projects and people contributing to them will be proposed for extending the data model used in the Software Heritage archive.
Methods and algorithms for reconciliating complementary of conflicting metadata collected from different origins, and for synthesising missing parts of the metadata from the available context information.
Coordination with existing initiatives The MELD working group will monitor all related emerging initiatives or standards and will take into account existing schemas like DOAP, FOAF, schema.org, DCAT, CodeMeta or ADMS.SW, reusing and sharing efforts where possible (see also our list of Software ontologies). It will also develop a list of pointers to existing efforts to build databases of metadata for software projects and their contributors.
Awareness The MELD working group will establish the relevant connections in order to raise awareness among all the interested parties.
Milestones
A first version of the metadata proposal is expected to arise from experiments conducted on existing collections of project metadata, like the ones originally present in Freecode.
Related working groups
The MELD working group shares concerns with the ELIE and OPAD working groups.
Team contact(s)
Documents
Connections
Active or planned connections to other initiatives, and activities will be listed in this section.