RE: The tone of the "JSON-LD vs. RDF" debate (was re: Sub-issue on the re-definition of Linked Data)

Hi all,

Although I haven't been able to get involved in the discussions on this 
(because I can't keep up with the volume), I'd like to say a couple of 
things.

First, as chair of a WG that sometimes suffers from the same problem I can 
only support Markus's request not to get personal. This is just not 
helpful.

Second, I think the JSON-LD group had the right idea in trying to provide 
people (so called "web/JSON developers") with a framework that lets them 
access RDF stores without knowing anything about RDF. I personally got 
feedback from someone at SemTech last week that made that very clear. His 
personal experience in being able to deliver RDF content to his customers 
using JSON-LD even prompted him to ask me why the LDP WG doesn't make 
JSON-LD the defaut/mandatory format for LDP.

This being said, I do feel like the group went a bit too far in not even 
having RDF as a normative reference. Like Pat, I don't really care that 
this be done in the intro but I find it odd that it goes as far as it does 
in trying to distance itself from RDF. So, I have to ask: do you guys 
really think the target audience - "web/JSON developers" - is going to 
learn about JSON-LD by reading the spec? My guess is it won't.

I believe most web/JSON developers program based on documentation they 
read specific to the service they want to use. So, as long as that 
documentation doesn't bother them with RDFy types of consideration and as 
long as the programing model seems natural to them you'll achieve your 
goal.

So, as Pat said, I'd rather we don't go too far in trying to lure that 
crowd. The deliverable still ought to be a spec that live up to the 
expectations one has of a W3C standard.

Best regards.
--
Arnaud  Le Hors - Software Standards Architect - IBM Software Group