FOAF/DC Terms discussion summary and PROPOSED RESOLUTION

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the discussion on this list 
over the last 24 hours or so. Threads begin at [1, 2]. In summary:

- FOAF has some very useful features, is widely adopted and has a lot in 
common with both vCard and DC terms. Excluding it from POWDER is, at 
best, unwise (and quite possibly shooting ourselves in the foot). Two WG 
members have voted against its removal.

- FOAF is likely to evolve some sort of semantic relationship with DC 
Terms in the coming months (er, years knowing how long these things take 
in reality)

- DC Terms can be seen as authoritative basis. The original dc:creator 
property is very widely used (and abused too). dcterms:creator looks 
about as stable as any term can be. It is more likely that foaf:Agent 
(and its useful sub classes) will become sub classes of dcterms:Agent 
than the other way around. Dan recommended we use dcterms.

- Neither FOAF nor DC is exactly right for us. As Andrea has 
articulated, what we want is a sub class of agent that is "an entity 
that is accountable and prepared to stand by its claims and assertions" 
... and that's rather more specialised than either :Agent class.

- Why don't we support both? The XML experts tell us that this is indeed 
possible within the schema. Good, that's our get out of gaol card.

- We're working on the Last Call documents right now and, having 
reviewed them, should resolve to publish and make the LC announcement 
following next week's face to face meeting. i.e. we're out of time.

Hence my PROPOSED RESOLUTION (already mentioned in a previous mail)

That our examples show a <creator> element in POWDER that is transformed 
into dcterms:creator in POWDER-S. However, we also state that <maker> -> 
foaf:maker is a permissible alternative and that, at the time of this 
writing, it is anticipated that the two vocabularies will be brought 
into even closer alignment. Exactly one of either <creator> or <maker> 
MUST be included as a child element of <attribution> in a valid POWDER 
document.

And then we need to work with Dan and others to see whether FOAF itself 
might include an Agent sub class that is more tailored to our needs.

Does that sound like a reasonable compromise and way forward?

Phil.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-powderwg/2008Jul/0028.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-powderwg/2008Jul/0031.html



-- 
Phil Archer
Chief Technical Officer,
Family Online Safety Institute
w. http://www.fosi.org/people/philarcher/

Received on Wednesday, 9 July 2008 10:28:21 UTC