Today, Open Knowledge International is launching the Frictionless Data Tool Fund, a minigrant scheme offering grants of $5,000 to help extend the implementation of software libraries — code that is used to develop software programs and applications— for the Frictionless Data specifications by developing them in a range of programming languages.
The focus of the Frictionless Data project is about building tools which can help people in removing the friction in working with data. These library implementations will support the development of this suite. We are looking for individual developers and organizations to help us improve the specifications and implement further work. The fund will be accepting submissions from now until 31st July 2017 for work which will be completed by the end of the year.
Last year a working group was set up to progress the specifications to our first 1.0 release, and we now have an excellent foundation to add further implementations to complement our core libraries. The Tool Fund is part of the Frictionless Data project at Open Knowledge International, where we are addressing issues related to frictions that occur when working with data. We are doing this by developing a set of tools, standards, and best practices built around the Data Package standard, a containerisation format for any kind of data based on existing practices for publishing open-source software.
Currently, Open Knowledge International maintain reference implementations for the specifications in two programming languages: Python and Javascript. In conjunction with the specifications themselves, these implementations exhibit the core functionality desired for working with data and demonstrate the type of functionality we expect implementations in other programming languages to have. We also have implementations in R and Ruby, stewarded by our technical partners. We want to build on these solid implementations of 1.0 specifications across a range of programming languages and work with implementers to further improve the specifications and how they are implemented in order to get us closer to our ideal of “frictionless” data transport across a diversity of data applications.
This is an initial list of languages we think are going to be of most benefit to the project. However, we welcome suggestions of languages which are not found here.
- Go
- PHP
- Java
- C#
- Swift
- C++
- Perl
- Matlab
- Clojure
- R
For some more information and to get a full understanding of what is required, take a close look at our implementation reference documentation and the v1.0 specifications of on the dedicated Tool Fund Page on the Frictionless Data site.
Applications can be made from today by submitting this form.
The Frictionless Data team will select one implementer per language, and notify all applicants whether they have been successful or not at the very latest by the end of July.
For more questions on the fund, speak directly to us on our forum or on our on our Gitter chat.
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