[LC response] To Marco Colombetti

Dear Marco,

Thank you for your comment
 <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-owl-comments/2009May/0001.html>
on the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language last call drafts.

The use of the term "Axiom" to mean, roughly, a closed well-formed formula, is 
now fairly standard in the OWL community. It is also clearly defined. It seems 
very unlikely that it would cause considerable confusion in those with a 
sophisticated background in logic, maths, or philosophy, though it may cause 
some distaste (the way that "ontology" does for some philosophers). Finally, 
it is deeply embedded in the current documents. Thus, the working group has 
determined that the alignment would not be worth the costs of fully making the 
change.

The working group has therefore decided not to make the suggested change in 
general, i.e. throughout all documents. However, most actual uses of the term 
"axiom" already refer to "statements that are asserted to be true" (by an 
ontology) and this use agrees with the general notion of the term in 
mathematics. We have now updated the OWL 2 Primer to avoid all other uses of 
"axiom." In particular, there is no more mentioning of "derived axioms" in 
Section 3. A diff of the changes is given at [1] and the updated document is 
at [2].

Please acknowledge receipt of this email to 
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In your acknowledgment please let us know whether or not you are satisfied 
with the working group's response to your comment.

Regards,
Markus Krötzsch
on behalf of the W3C OWL Working Group

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/index.php?title=Primer&diff=23170&oldid=23169
[2] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Primer