"Although Ogden's background is in city government, the Dat team is now squarely focused on the needs of scientists. That's largely because of the Sloan Foundation's focus. 'I don't come from a scientific background and wasn't even thinking about science data,' he says. 'But they convinced me that I should.' He explains that scientists have to deal with many of the same issues with formats and tracking changes that city governments do. Using Dat, Ogden says, much of this complexity could be abstracted away, at least for some users of the data."

I don't think this is a reason for hating the authors or the project. Academic scientists face a lot of the same problems as users of open data, and if the Sloan Foundation wants to pay to solve those problems for science, the project moves forward more quickly, and people using open data in other ways still benefit.