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Awkward issue. This stackexchange is dedicated to question about open data and all things open source. It strikes me then that the very platform it has been created on is not open source. It is true, the devs behind StackExchange have suggested they may consider opening the source sometime in the future. But still... is this not in conflict with the principles of BlueObelisk? A purist might say it is even hypocritical.

What's more, there are free and open alternatives budding on the internet, why not support their initiative and use them instead?

Two threads from meta on the topic:

Two clones (like I already said, they are budding :D):

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Karol, please bring in your suggested alternatives... – Egon Willighagen Jan 3 at 10:44

4 Answers

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I'm developing a serious alternative to Stack Exchange called Question2Answer:

http://www.question2answer.org/

The first version is currently in beta and I would welcome feedback.

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Interesting... what Open Specifications does it use (or define) to allow interoperability? Additionally, does it support RDF and RDFa? – Egon Willighagen Feb 7 at 15:13
The first version will have microformats support (mainly hAtom with some extensions). As for RDF standards, if it becomes a common request. And of course the data sits in your own MySQL database, so you can do whatever you want with it. – Gideon Greenspan Feb 7 at 15:50
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Hi, I'm developing shapado with some friends and it's getting to the point where it's ready for professional use as AT&T is using it internally, you can create your site online for free or install it on your own server.

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What import/export features does it have? Can we import the data from the running server? – Egon Willighagen Feb 15 at 8:07
Do you mean export from stackexchange and import into shapado? I'm not aware of stackexchange enabling exporting their data. If you have a dump though we'd be glad to import it for you into shapado. – patcito Feb 15 at 21:08
Hi, shapado now support importing stackexchange xml export. Just send us a link to your export and we'll import it for you. You can chat with us on #shapado in freenode irc. – patcito Feb 24 at 22:08
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I would say, the Blue Obelisk is restricted to Open Data, Open Source, and Open Specifications around cheminformatics... Personally, I prefer to use Open Source as much as possible: identica over twitter, Linux over Windows, OpenOffice over MS-Office (only when LaTeX is not an option)...

Unfortunately, scientists do not seem to care about Open too much, and sometimes to get something done, Blue Obelisk members use closed source sofware. For example, many use Windows or OS/X.

Regarding the StackExchange choice... they made a offer: free trial of there software hosted by them. That made me attempt to see what this could do for the community; I am very much open to Open alternatives with free hosting. If you know good alternatives which provide this kind of format, please list them, and I'll check them out.

Is it a problem? I'm rather inclined to say yes, but we I guess we try to focus on the more important bits first: getting cheminformatics reproducible first.

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There's another problem with StackExchange - no data export (yet). It's been promised, and there's even a dummy link to do it in the admin console, but so far no implementation.

No data export means lockin - which can happen with both 'open' and 'non-open' systems.

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Yes, that's where the 'StackExchange does not use OpenStandards' comes in ... :) I have been looking at ways to extract the data, and while there is not cooked up export functionality, the data is pretty machine readable. Making regular back ups need to be started rather sooner than later... – Egon Willighagen Jan 5 at 21:57

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