Re: OWL dot OWL file

Just a POV.

I've long found owl.owl (and rdf.rdf and rdfs.rdfs) to be positively  
harmful, when they've been attended to. This happens in three ways:

1) People do weird things with them (like import them); thankfully,  
this is nearly stamped out; they also trust them (wrongly)
2) Implementors use them in spite of their oddness/incompleteness  
(e.g., swi prolog, but perhaps this is a marginal implementation; an  
example where this sort of thing was, in fact, harmful, see the  
thread surrounding this message <http://lists.owldl.com/pipermail/ 
pellet-users/2007-August/001809.html> wrt the swrl ontologies).
3) It promulgates the idea that RDF or OWL is appropriate for this  
sort of thing. Which leads to more 1 and 2.

It also fits in with some of my objections to GRDDL (and yes, I am  
well aware that some of these objection apply to the XML Schema...I'm  
not thrilled with the situation :)).

I find the "linked data" rationale to be exceedingly weak, since this  
isn't data. Similarly, that some people like this style doesn't  
really do much for me since I suspect 1) they are in a very small  
minority and 2) it actually misleads them.

That all being said, I won't object to this in spite of the  
irrationality of it. I accept we must kowtow to this sort of thing.

I would suggest, however, that the file be *minimal*. Ideally, I  
would like *just* a list of terms with a seeAlso for each term  
pointing to the relevant part of the structural specification.

I guess I'll go with "whatever", but I don't think it will represent  
the technical consensus of the group. Oh well.

Cheers,
Bijan.