[rdfweb-dev] Re: licence for Ontologies

[Danny Ayers]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:39:11 -0400, Ron Alford <ronwalf at umd.edu> wrote:

> I'm not sure what the big deal is about alternate versions of Ontologies.
> If you take the straight foaf ontology and apply it to Live Journal's
> data, you will get tons of false inferences (in the real life sense,
> anyways). They are, by default, using an unpublished and distinct
> version of Foaf.

Using a distinct version leads to tons of false inferences..errm, well
isn't that exactly the problem?

> In my own copy of Foaf, I've been tempted to model Organizations as a
> subclass of Group.  This would allow me to do membership and other
> things that are beneficial to what I'm trying to express.

Sure, but that could be done using ron:Organizations couldn't it?

> Taken together, the axioms in the ontology form rules for expressing the
> implicit.  My use of foaf:Organization is one way of several to express
> that I'm talking about the same thing, but disagreeing on the
> definition.  See wikipedia for some examples of disagreement on
> definitions.  Do we expect the semantic web to be any different?

Ok, but isn't it preferable to lean towards the consistent wherever possible?

> My instance data specifically imports this copy of foaf, so that
> reasoners know exactly what rules I'm following, and can classify
> accordingly.
> 
> 
> > Things could get complicated if they introduced assertions that led to
> >  inconsistencies with the 'official' schema (in human or logical
> > terms). Say someone wants to say "John knows Rioja", and add the
> > statement:
> >
> > foaf:knows rdfs:range vin:Wine
> 
> Does this somehow corrupt the original foaf?  No, because the original
> ontology at it's published and findable location is still intact.  It
> boils down to a problem of contexts, and if you don't keep context in
> mind when working on the web, you're sunk before you even begin.

I don't disagree, but I also don't think it's good to encourage
unnecessary partitions in the data.

> > Whether anything in human law, copyright or whatever, may be useful in
> > encouraging consistency, I don't know.
> >
> 
> Consistency is already heavily tilted towards the owner of the URI.
> However, trying to mandate definitions in RDF seems futile and
> aggravating. to me.  

Hmm, mandate definitions? Like specifications?

Does foaf need specific permission in order to
> subclass foaf:Person?
> What if want to express the ontology in RuleML, DAML, First order logic,
> OWL with E-connections, etc?

If you want interoperability, then you would also want consistency,
whatever representation you're using.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com