Re: LANG: Proposal to close ontology versioning (ISSUE 5.14)

Jim Hendler wrote:
> 
> >
> >Backward-compatibility is only a relation that can hold between two
> >versions of the same ontology. I should have been clearer and said that
> >if one ontology is a priorVersion of another and backward-compatibility
> >is not declared, then incompatibility should be assumed. The ontology
> >author is the one who knows best whether the two versions are
> >incompatible, so I don't see how merging has anything to do with it.
> ><snip>
> 
> Jeff -
>   while I support your current proposal, I have a lot of trouble with
> "If ... backward-compatibility is not declared, then incompatibility
> should be assumed"
> I think that is way to strong -- I think it should be something more like
> 
> If ... backward-compatibility is not declared, then compatibility
> should not be assumed"
> 
> that is, if you have a new version and don't make any declarations at
> all, why should I assume that everything must be broken.  Rather I
> should have a caveat that it may be broken and proceed with caution.
> I think this is most important for those of us who don't intend to
> use the strong imports unless we have to, and thus if we are pointing
> to a small piece of ontology with our own policy on how to process
> it, it should be up to me to decide about compatibility.  I could
> also live with
> If ... backward-compatibility is not declared, then incompatibility
> MAY be assumed"
> 

I could live with either of the above rewordings, although I prefer the
second one.

Jeff