RE: "Resource" (RDF vocabulary definitions)

> I understand what you're saying.
> But the intent seems to be to represent all existents on the web.
> In that case, "Resource" and "existent" are absolutely identical.
> So why use two different words when they have exactly the same
> meaning?

Why have two terms for "cardiac arrest" and "heart attack" (I know there's a
third, but I can't recall it)? Different communities have different words
for different things and concepts. Sometimes one must adopt the language of
another to communicate with them. "existent" isn't a term often used in the
context of the web, "resource" is.

> If you want to distinguish existents which are represented on the
> web from those which are not represented on the web, then it makes
> sense to have two words.

No. It isn't to distinguish those things represented on the web.

Anything with a URI is a web resource, even if you cannot dereference that
URI to obtain a representation of it. (For one thing, the distributed and
lose and fallible nature of the web means that it you can never guarantee
any dereferencing operation - the web is built to deal with that fact).