Re: [Fwd: Sparql editorial comment: acknowledge prior art]

Dan Connolly wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 16:57 +0100, Seaborne, Andy wrote:
> 
>>Is it normal to have an acknowledgement of prior art section in a W3C 
>>recommendation?  A quick scan of other recs suggests that it is not.  Any 
>>acknowledgements sections seem to be acknowledgements to the WG process, not 
>>to prior art.
>>
>>As this is not an academic paper, I propose continuing to not have a prior 
>>art section.
> 
> 
> First, note that UC&R has a "Related Technologies and Standards"
> section
>  http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-dawg-uc/#relts
> that cites prior work indirectly via the "RDF Query Survey". In our
> response to Jacco van Ossenbruggen, let's note that.

Agreed.

> 
> Second, re acknowledgements in rq23 itself, I wrote about
> this back on 21 Mar 2005:
> 
> "Eek... no acknowledgements section... I recommend you add one,
> and each time you integrate a comment, acknowledge the commentor
> by name."
>  -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2005JanMar/0383

That is fine - it was a "prior art" section that the requestor was requesting.

 Andy

> 
> See also a posting to the TAG internal list
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/tag/2004Oct/0028
> 
> Since I wrote it, I can quote it here in public:
> 
> [[
> For the acknowledgements section, I prefer the style where
> each contributor is acknowledged by name. I just did
> a scan of the (5000 line) CVS history of webarch.html,
> and here are the by-name references to contributors
> that I found. I'd like to see these in the acks section.
> ]]
> 
> And Norm agreed, and the result is: http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#acks
> 
> 
> 
>>In practical terms there are real problems: in SPARQL there are ideas that 
>>were independently invented/suggested by more than one party, ideas that 
>>started in personal email many years before the WG started and ideas that 
>>have morphed so much form the initial idea as to be distinctly different. 
>>We have already had a similar request for references to non-RDF query 
>>systems.  The only consist and fair policy is to have no such section.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure that's the only fair policy, but I agree that it's probably
> more trouble than it's worth to do a nice edited history of the ideas
> in SPARQL.
> 
> I think it *is* worth some trouble to put in the acknowledgements
> section the name of every person who contributed text to the
> spec, though.
> 
> 
>> Andy

Received on Monday, 1 August 2005 08:30:11 UTC