[dxwg] "Current" vs "last" versions (#1304)

aisaac has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/dxwg:

== "Current" vs "last" versions ==
I'm afraid I'm not fully buying the new properties for versioning `dcat:hasCurrentVersion` and `dcat:hasLastVersion` introduced by #1295 

First, I believe the words do not sound entirely appropriate.
I.e. it seems that the main difference regards status, especially publication status. I don't think the opposition between 'current' and 'last' reflect this. For many people, these adjectives mean the same thing.
If we want to represent that difference in shade of status, then maybe other words would be better. The current text (well, maybe I am forbidden to use 'current' and I should use 'last' here ;-) ) mentions 'stable', maybe this is a word that is more helpful. The W3C categories at the top of the spec distinguish 'Latest published version' from 'Latest editor's draft', maybe these words could be used too.

Second, the use case motivating them is interesting, but perhaps it's a borderline case for dataset versioning. I.e., if I go to a dataset catalogue, I'm not expecting to find many draft versions datasets. Would you?
In other words, I would expect `dcat:hasCurrentVersion` to be always present, while `dcat:hasLastVersion` would be used for specific cases.
Maybe we can find a Litmus test for this discussion: if the 'latest' version that can be accessed is an 'official' one, would DCAT recommend that two statements are created to link twice the same pair of resources, one with `dcat:hasCurrentVersion` and one with `dcat:hasLastVersion`?
If yes, then I'm not sure I like this but I will accept it ;-)
If not, then maybe we're on the same line, in the end. But then it would be good to indicate in the text that one property is more essential to the representation of version histories than the other. And maybe to push `dcat:hasLastVersion` into an own (sub)section, not systematically presenting it on a par with `dcat:hasCurrentVersion`.

Continuing on this second aspect, maybe here there's a bit of a bias introduced here by having used DCAT itself for the versioning example. I reckon that ontologies can be claimed to be datasets, but they're not very typical ones. (but perhaps that remark deserves another issue!)

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/issues/1304 using your GitHub account


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Received on Tuesday, 23 February 2021 22:59:00 UTC