Why galaxy-graph#

Origin story#

This is quite the personal story, but I recently discovered the “ontology rabbit hole”, which led me to search for simple, intuitive, libre, and lightweight tools to manage, edit and view them.

I discovered rdflib, which is really great ! However, I wanted something less “heavy”. While rdflib is perfect for managing existing ontologies, it is centered around that specific use-case. I wanted something that allows making quick drafts without having to care about URIs, attributes, etc. Something to edit any kind of graph.

I found pre-existing packages with the same goal, but they didn’t quite “click” for me. So, I decided to made my own. This is a great exercise for me, and I really think it brings something that was missing.

What it brings#

  1. FLOSS, not FOSS: licensing is a political issue. I want to live in a world where everyone contributes to the commons.

  2. Typed: because I love static typing in dynamic language. (don’t ask why, I honestly don’t know myself).

  3. Simple: There is a Graph, it contains Nodes. A Node contains Connections. Nothing else.

Why galaxy ?#

I have started a long-standing project called modularity in PHP. The goal is to have very flexible pieces that can be put together to form a modular framework.

With this project, I am starting something similar in Python, so I needed a prefix for the project name to ensure consistency if I continue with more Python project with the same principle.

I love space, so I chose the prefix “galaxy”. Other galaxy projects are available on the galaxy homepage.