uBio & Free taxonomic information

[christian thompson]

David:

Thank you for your very informative response. As expected, you avoided
answering the simple questions I asked of uBio.

I accused of uBio of building their program on the premise of free
taxonomic information. You have now confirmed that (*see below). You
could have told your sponsors that your idea involved a partnership with
taxonomy and their costs had to be part of the whole. Other scientists
do that when they need services from other sources EXCEPT when that
source is taxonomy.

Yes, we do understand how you would view a name as being worth only a
"nickel"(*see below). Species2000 started with a "buck" per name and
Fauna Europea is paying 5 euros per species.

As for your 5 contributions to the community:
1 & 4: Yes, we would expect you to attend meetings and workshops
looking for names for your program. That contributes nothing to
taxonomy.
2: Giving names to ECAT is nice, but taxonomists can do this without
your help. And, at least, ECAT is PAYING taxonomists something for their
names.
3: Tools is one thing the community has had a lot of built over the
years. What the community needs help with is accumulation and
verification of data / information.
5: Neave's Nomenclator Zoologicus HAS BEEN digitized years ago.
Zoological Record and Zoo Soc London did this back in the late 1980s.
Unfortunately, it was never released to the public because the Zoo Soc
thought that the community would not pay for what was already FREE and
AVAILABLE.

[For those reading TAXACOM and who do not know, Neave has been scanned
and digitized a number of times by individuals, etc. Unfortunately it
isn't proper to admit to such. So many have hoped that the Zoological
Society of London would publically release their digitized version. When
those who have unethically digitized Neave release their data set, they
will be discovered as there are numerous errors unique to Neave! Those
errors have only been discovered by carefully checking the original
literature. It is that fidelity to the original that marks the work of
taxonomists and separate it from that of compilers of compilations!]

The best way to build a BRIDGE is to help one's poorer partner do
their share. Asking them to work for free so you can collect the toll
isn't much help nor of mutual benefit. [Obviously in a market economy,
how can taxonomists compete for funding when uBio is building with full
funding "something used N number of libraries, museums, and schools ..."
with our information and making it available free? In regular business,
the producers pays for their critical supplies.]

*You avoided the question, but we do know from your PR releases that
you have received more than half million dollars so far for your bridge.
I would have hoped, like GBIF is doing now, you could have shared some
of that with taxonomists. Given that you got at least $500,000 and that
you believe that names are worth only a "nickel," why did not you simply
ask for a token $10,000 for what are the 200,000 generic names in
Zoology? That would have demonstrated to the taxonomy community at least
an appreciation and understanding that taxonomical information isn't
free.

[Finally, for the readers of TAXACOM who are not aware, the issue is
only genus-group names in Zoology as those in botany, bacteriology,
etc., have been done. Neave with annual up-dates from Zoological Record
are the only publically available sources for these generic names. And
uBio knows there are errors, omissions, etc., in these sources, so they
are dependent on zoologists to provide them with better lists of
genus-group names. And for taxonomists, this is the last thing we have
that many, like the library community, view as of value beyond our
"free" identification services. However, even those will be replaced by
Paul Hebert's DNA Barcode taxonomy!]

Smile, if you can  :-) ;-)

F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., USDA
c/o Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov e-mail
www.diptera.org  web site