Ontology-Driven, Distributed Technology Search Tools

Exploring Technology through Linked Open Data

Our Mission and Values

A distributed way to index and search hardware.

Ontology tools to enable collaborative editing of distributed standards.

Linked Data powered information.

Let people find, research and combine existing technology, and make its meta-data available for powerful search applications.

NGI Search Project

Towards a Linked Data Powered Hardware Design Search Ecosystem

The Project is part of the 5th NGI Search Call, aiming to enable a better searchable internet of the future.

You can find out more in our graphical overview.

Internet of production
NGI-Search
OSE-Germany
Open Toolchain Foundation
OSHWA
Appropedia

Repositories

This document maintains a list of repositories that are used within the project. We make a distinction between three types of repositories:

We maintain development repositories in which most of the work takes place and that can be considered part of our project. Development repositories contain the main contributions to this project and have a compliant open source license. They are distinct modules of the project initiative.

The second type constitutes contributing repositories: These are repositories that this project contributes to, but are not directly targeted by it. These repositories have a more supporting role and the development repositories may make use of this category of repositories.

Finally, reference repositories are not necessarily part of the project, but are relevant to the project either for inspiration or for alternative implementation directions.

Project Repositories

Name
Description"
Platform
Type
OpenKnowHow

This repository is forked from the OPEN-NEXT project that initiated this version of Open Know How / Library of Open Source Hardware (OKH-LOSH). It contains a specification of the Open Know-How standard in Linked Open Data form. Note that it now officially deprecates the first version which was not using LOD.

github development
open-dataset

A newly created ontology for annotating data-sets with relevant meta information. It is tweaked towards scraped data, at the moment.

codeberg development
OKH-krawler

This provides a scraper that collects OSH projects from various hosting technologies/platforms, like Thingiverse, OSHWA and Appropedia.

github development
LOSH-OKH-tool

Validates and converts between different formats and versions of OKH metadata.

github development
owl2shacl

Convert (simple) ontologies to SHACL shapes in order to validate to what extent linked data adheres to the ontology.

codeberg development
ontprox

An HTTP service that acts as a proxy for ontologies, converting them on-the-fly into the requested RDF serialization format or HTML.

codeberg development
eyeball

An RDF linter from Apache. Revived after a period of 10+ years of inactivity.

codeberg development
okh-scraper

A stand-alone tool that scrapes Open Source Hardware (OSH) projects from different platforms and other hosting technologies.

github development
prttl

A pretty printer for RDF/Turtle files optimized for diff minimization.

codeberg development
OOPS

A linter for RDF/OWL ontologies that makes a distinction between various pitfalls in ontology design.

github development
osh-search

A web front-end to search, filter and demonstrate the Query power of SPARQL and data-sets available through a good looking graphical user-interface. link: “https://codeberg.org/elevont/prttl”

codeberg development
w3id

Contains information about permanent URLs that redirect to our ontologies.

github contributing
OKH-RDF-DB

Helps you to host the OKH data with the Apache Jena triple-store.

github contributing
rdf.sh

A command-line utility for devs, supporting various Semantic Web operations.

github contributing
oh-tsdc

Contains Technology-specific Documentation Criteria (TsDC) according to DIN SPEC 3105-1.

github contributing
oh-tsdc-tools

Tools to convert different formats of Technology-specific Documentation Criteria (TsDC) into each other.

github contributing
jena

A Java framework for writing Semantic Web applications. Note that this is our own distribution of it that enables RDF 1.0. It is used in the Eyeball OWL/RDF linter.

github contributing
lov-dump-updater

Takes the LOV data dump, reformats it, and stores the changes since the last time into a git repository. This allows for easy consumption of (the changes of) “all” the ontologies out there.

github contributing
lov-dump

The output of the above repository.

codeberg contributing
rdfoothills

A library for conversion between different RDF serialization formats (using external tools), and for RDF MIME-types.

codeberg contributing
OSH-ont

Open Source Hardware Ontology - Defining a common vocabulary for the OSH community, both human- and machine-readable.

codeberg contributing
okh-search

A prototype federated search engine for OKH projects. It is based on the OKH v1 standard.

github reference

History

In 2019 the Open Know-How (OKH) standard was introduced by a consortium of 10 organizations, led by the MakerNet Alliance (now Internet of Production Alliance (IoPA)) under a grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation. It was developed to establish a structured, interoperable format for Open Source Hardware (OSH) documentation. Between 2020 and 2024, the Linked Open Source Hardware (LOSH) variant became the most advanced version of OKH, developed within the OPEN!NEXT project, a European Union-funded initiative. LOSH introduced Linked Open Data (LOD) principles to enhance data discoverability and interoperability.

In 2022, the LOSH fork was proposed as the new official OKH standard, maintained by Open Source Ecology Germany (OSEG). By May 2024, OKH LOSH was formally re- integrated into IoPA, establishing it as the official successor to OKH v1 based on Linked Data.

Currently, OSEG is continuing under the NGI Search-funded project, ‘Towards a Linked Data Powered Hardware Design Search Ecosystem’ (2024–2025). This initiative aims to advance metadata structuring, RDF compatibility, and federated search capabilities, reinforcing high- quality ontologies, enabling OKH as the foundation for an open, searchable hardware ecosystem and beyond.