It's like freebase all right, but the article has something right about adoption. He points out some big company would have to donate a great starting dataset to drive adoption.
One of the biggest competitive advantages companies have is data. Like the article and previous comment already said, adoption is the hardest barrier. Unless someone can provide a compelling reason for companies/scientists/etc to give data or data access, there really isn't much else to discuss.
I think sites like mashery and dapper.net are going in the right direction, by providing good licensing rights and monetization controls that can incent large companies with reliable datasets to participate.