Re: Naming the standard

Ben,

personally, I agree with your conclusion and I would be fine with POE (and using the "poe" as the 'preferred' prefix in the RDF world). This would also mean, I presume, having a clean start, under the POE banner, for the vocabulary definition's vocabulary URI, ie, the corresponding RDF(S), possibly OWL, etc, files.

However, and just to be fair: there is a caveat. I myself cannot really judge: how disruptive would that be for the community? This indeed means that the prefixes, vocabulary URI-s, etc, have to be changed everywhere, for all implementations and applications. This may or may not be an issue (I cannot judge it), but we should be prepared to give the right answers.

There was a somewhat similar situation with the Web Annotation work. That WG, and the upcoming standard, grew out of a Community Group that used the term Open Annotation, with a preferred prefix 'oa'. After discussions, the WG decided to retain the vocabulary URI and the preferred prefix to ensure a smooth transition, although the final vocabulary is not identical to the old one. That being said, there were no major issue with the name, like the "digital rights" problem you refer to. The Annotation WG's work was/is, both technically and from the point of view of the "image", a smooth transition from the CG work. In this sense it is different from ODRL.

Again, to emphasize, I believe, personally, that keeping to POE is the good choice, but we have to be aware of the issues and possibly have good answers if we are asked.

Cheers

Ivan

> On 12 Sep 2016, at 15:59, benedict.whittamsmith@thomsonreuters.com wrote:
> 
> There is a debate about the naming of our standard. Some of us would like to retain ODRL; others to continue with Permissions & Obligations Expression.
> 
> Naming things is always hard and frequently fraught. So we should take our time but solve this issue.
> 
> I suggest we debate this through the mailing list and then take a vote on the second call following the face-to-face at TPAC. That would be the call on October 10th.
> 
> I personally favour publishing a standard for Permissions & Obligations Expression. Why? Because it unambiguously describes the intent and purpose of the standard.
> 
> I don't believe that ODRL does this. It's the DR at the centre: Digital Rights. It's both too narrow and too broad.
> 
> Why's it too narrow? Because I'd like to express regulatory constraints (like data residency requirements) within the standard. But these aren't rights.
> 
> Why's it too broad? Because the whole issue of 'digital rights' has become conflated with the issue of enforcement. We don't need to look beyond the W3C to see the damage that issue can cause.
> 
> But it's worse. I regularly hear ODRL criticised for its weakness in enforcement. It's a common misconception that the 'DR' reference invites.
> 
> We were renamed Permissions & Obligations Expression by the W3C to avoid these issues and to keep us out of the DR bun-fight. Very wise I say. It's succeeded so far. Let's remain unambiguous: let's remain POE.
> 
> Over to you ...
> 
> Ben
> 
> 
> This e-mail is for the sole use of the intended recipient and contains information that may be privileged and/or confidential. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail and any attachments. Certain required legal entity disclosures can be accessed on our website. <http://site.thomsonreuters.com/site/disclosures/>

----
Ivan Herman, W3C
Digital Publishing Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704