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structured.world
Open, evidence-backed knowledge about products and things: what they are, what they are made of, which rules apply to them, and how we know.
The problem
The same product is described again and again: once for each marketplace, once for each distributor's catalogue standard, once for each authority that asks. None of these descriptions are connected, each is maintained by hand, and none of them can be reused by the next system that needs it. When two of them disagree, there is usually no way to tell which is right, or why.
New obligations make the gap concrete. The EU Digital Product Passport, introduced by Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 on ecodesign for sustainable products, will require structured data about composition, origin, repair and recycling, category by category. It is one use among many: compatibility of parts, conformity with standards, recalls and repair need the same knowledge. The obligations exist. A shared, open way to describe products does not yet.
What we are building
structured.world is a shared model of things, and of the knowledge about them.
- Stable identity. Every product, part, material, organisation, standard and regulation has a permanent identity, with versions over time. A correction keeps the history of what was known before.
- Facts with their evidence. A value is recorded with where it comes from: a manufacturer's declaration, a measurement and its method, an official record. Different claims about the same property are kept side by side instead of silently overwriting each other.
- Time. A fact states when it applies, and "not known" is never confused with "always".
- Standards and conformity. Standards are kept edition by edition, and a certificate covers exactly the products and requirements it names, nothing more.
- Relations that mean something. Compatibility, composition, and who designed, made or branded a product are typed facts, not loose links.
It covers four domains:
- Physical objects: raw materials, industrial products, consumer goods.
- Organisations and institutions: legal forms, public bodies, international organisations.
- Intellectual objects: standards, laws and regulations with their versions and their links to product categories, licences, certificates.
- Processes: manufacturing processes, services, administrative procedures.
Contributions are reviewed before they are published: from a contributor's statement, through review by people who know the category, to confirmation by the manufacturer or an official source.
What the statute guarantees
These are not intentions. They are provisions of the association's statute.
| Guarantee | Statute |
|---|---|
| The data is published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, ODbL or an equivalent open licence, with public read access | Art. 38.1(b), 42.3 |
| The technical schemas (data formats, protocols, API specifications) are published under the Apache 2.0 licence | Art. 42.4 |
| Contributors keep the copyright in what they contribute | Art. 39.2, 40.3 |
| Data already published stays public under its licence, whatever happens to the association | Art. 62.1 |
| The association's intellectual property cannot be assigned without two thirds of all voting members | Art. 43 |
Status
structured.world is in development. Its architecture and data contracts are being specified and implemented; there is no public release date yet, and we will not announce one before we can keep it.