Re: Soft ontology reuse

No, you are right. The soft reuse has to still work if someone actually do the owl import of upstream - in a way if editors like Protege could have a "remove import on save" mechanism that would do it.

Perhaps a new property for the soft import should be added on the owl:Ontology instead of owl:imports -- a kind of optional import? (I have used seeAlso)

I would not want to suggest soft reuse for cheating to hide design errors in ontologies, just to avoid forcing upstream ontology loading onto your users if it is not an essential upper ontology (e.g. you don't rely on its hierarchies or inferences).

The softer approach of just seeAlso/amps mapping must be used instead if your ontology is not compatible. (or .. fix your ontology  :-)

In the soft import approach, to see if it is compatible, you have to import both the upstream and your ontology (e.g. a myontology-plus-imports.owl)



On 20 Jan 2017 1:58 pm, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Stian Soiland-Reyes <soiland-reyes@manchester.ac.uk> writes:

> On Wed, 18 Jan 2017 12:01:22 -0800, Krzysztof Janowicz <janowicz@ucsb.edu> wrote:
>> No, they are open. They are just not 'linked' to other ontologies. In
>> fact, many people would say that the way some of us think about 'reuse'
>> of ontologies is highly problematic but that is an entirely different
>> story. Keep in mind that the discussion here is a reflection on
>> Alberto's email, not about whether LOV is useful or not (and I clearly
>> believe it is).
>
> Yes, directly reusing ontologies (e.g. owl:imports) can come with many
> technical challenges such as inconsitencies at reasoning level (e.g. OWL)
> or network dependencies (purl.org still fresh in mind)
>
> So I understand many don't want to do such strong reuse - indeed I have myself
> moved instead to a model of a "soft reuse", with extensions of existing
> ontologies through "citations" instead.


This all sounds like a good idea to me, although I think it may well
integrate poorly with if someone else is NOT doing the same. For
example, if your ontology is inconsistent with another that you soft
import, then I am import both, my ontology now becomes inconsistent
perhaps unexpectedly.

Phil