Re: Choosing a "short name" for our working group pubs

Alan-
   I agree the shortname is not a ig deal - but I do think the  
question of whether we are versioning Owl for real, or producing a  
set of useful extensions, is important to the WG.  If all we are  
doign is extending OWL, and we maintain backward compatibility, then  
the language stays "OWL" per se and our documents can be incremental  
on the previous set.  If we are changing OWL, and the new version is  
not almost completely backward compatible (some would say completely)  
then we are doing the masking thing, and we can either have a new  
name or version number.  In that case, it becomes incumbent on us to  
document the entire language, at least with diffs, although in my  
opinion we'd have a higher burden than that  (and looking at some  
past W3C AC decisions I've been involved in, I think there are other  
AC members who generally believe change requires more documentation  
than extension).
Frankly, I'm not yet really clear from the docs to date which of  
these we are doing, esp until we start closing some of the issues.   
I'm fine with postponing the decision, but I think issue-51 does matter
  -JH
p.s. I will remove all my objections to all OWL 1.1 issues if the  
spec can say that Bijan's opinion is normative and include his phone  
number and email address :-)

On Nov 3, 2007, at 6:17 PM, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:

>
> On Nov 2, 2007, at 1:20 PM, Jeremy Carroll wrote:
>
>> b) the versioning policy of W3C seems to me to argue against the  
>> appropriateness of a 1.1 label:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/2005/05/tr-versions
>> [[ However, one common expectation when using the major/minor  
>> version scheme is that, for a given major version number, the  
>> Recommendation with the highest minor version number supersedes  
>> all others sharing that major version number. By supersede, we  
>> mean that authors and implementers should stop using the old  
>> version and start using the new version; in effect the new version  
>> masks the old one. The status section of a minor version should  
>> state clearly that it supersedes the previous minor version. ]]
>>
>> I do not believe there will be community consensus that OWL 1.1  
>> should mask OWL 1.0, hence OWL 1.1 seems an inappropriate name for  
>> a recommendation that evolves from the member submission.
>
> Two thoughts about this.
>
> 1) The short name doesn't commit us to a decision about what the  
> official name of the product is, nor the namespace. The worse that  
> can happen is that people look sideways a bit at the url.
>
> 2) On the question of whether we release OWL 1.1, I'm not sure I  
> see what you mean by masking. First, in the section quoted it says  
> there is an expectation, but obviously not a certainty, as it  
> instructs that the status section explicitly say what the policy  
> is. Further I don't see this sort of thing happening uniformly -   
> just because there is http 1.1 doesn't mean people don't use http  
> 1.0. Finally, our charter says we are aiming for backwards  
> compatibility. I completely agree that we need to come to consensus  
> about what we call the next release, but I'm unaware of options  
> other than having our current work be a new rev of OWL. Could you  
> set out what you see as alternatives?
>
> -Alan
>
>
>

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would  
it?." - Albert Einstein

Prof James Hendler				http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler
Tetherless World Constellation Chair
Computer Science Dept
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180

Received on Sunday, 4 November 2007 13:47:11 UTC