We need a Wikipedia for data

Sounds a lot like what I think Freebase [http://www.freebase.com/] are trying to do.

Free vector map data is growing: http://openstreetmap.org . They recently got donated the whole Netherlands.

It's like freebase all right, but the article has something right about adoption. He points out some big company would have to donate a great starting dataset to drive adoption.

I think this is one problem with Freebase. Another problem I see is the structuring of the data, it is a hurdle to sharing.

Finally the last problem I see is Data is currently very much seen as a competitive advantage. When Google introduce functionalities to make corrections on Google Maps, I don’t think they do it to share with everyone else. They do it because they want Google Maps to be the destination with the best possible data. A wiki of data is a great idea, but I’m not sure we have the solution yet.

Joel had an article on "commoditizing your complements": http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html . Of course we want to commoditize data, to raise the value of hackers (raise the expected return from hacking). On the other side, data companies want to commoditize hackers, to raise the value of data... a process we are sure to resent.

Bret is spot on. Open data would unlock a vast amount of wealth. Other suggestions: A collection of various kinds of texts, translated into 20-30 different languages. 100 million words (per language) would be fine. 20 minutes of text, spoken in thousands of different voices/accents.