rdfms-assertion and webont

Hello Jim, Guus

(Peter I am copying you out FYI, if you think we should follow up on this,
why don't we do that on the other thread: "AS&S - next steps")

I wanted to adequately alert you of the interaction between rdfms-assertion
and the annotation issues that peter and I will report back on.

If I have a class say:

<owl:Class rdf:ID="c">
   <rdfs:comment>This is what a c is</rdfs:comment>
   <rdfs:isDefinedBy rdf:resource="http:/example.org/"/>
</owl:Class>

I think most of us would see this as unproblematic.
However, when combined with rdfms-assertion, using this class involves some
level of buy-in to both the comment and, potential, the isDefinedBy object,
which may not even be retrievable, let alone in a language that you
understand.

I think that this is correct, and so support (to some extent) the RDF Core
WG position.
I believe Peter sees this as badly broken (a position I can understand).

I am also pretty sure that some WG members feel as strongly as Peter on the
other side; there is also the possibility of inter-WG conflict on this.

Personally, I feel we must allow rdfs:comment and rdfs:isDefinedBy, and
cannot disown the social meaning in RDF.

A real technical problem here is that OWL classes can be defined using
descriptions and then it really is not clear who is buying into what social
meaning.

If A defines an innocent vocabulary,
If B describes a person "John Doe" in the vocab of A
If C defines a class using vocab of A and making defammatory assertions
about its members,
and
D imports  A, B and C, and "John Doe" fits the description in C.

We have the RDF Graph of D "socially entailing"  defaming John Doe; and it
really doesn't seem to be anybody's fault.
D would be well-advised to not import C's class definitions, since whatever
their technical merit the comments are problematic.

==

I get told off in the Jena developers list for inappropriate comments in my
code.
(the cock up cock up ...)

===

In my view, this issue alone could take more than a month to resolve; and
this argues for publishing WDs now.

Jeremy