Re: Assistance requested to be able to register application/rif+xml media type

Hey Ralph,

Always good to hear from you.

I looked at the IETF feedback and it seemed solid and sensible, if the
specs being considered were proving useful.

My impression from talking to pretty much everyone on the topic is that RIF
seems to have "missed the mark" as a technology. I have never heard anyone
speak of it as having found a niche. This is not a criticism of anyone
involved - I have similar concerns for CSVW which I co-chaired and still
see value in.

In the absence of any signs of life, I fear that revving the spec for sake
of the IETF paperwork would be unrewarding busywork. Is there any
suggestion that a media-type registration is blocking any significant
implementation of RIF?

Would you and others have any interest in putting the time instead into a
cycle of retrospective re-evaluation - i.e. a (non-judgmental, respectful,
impersonal, ...) evaluation of where the idea of standard rule languages
around RDF has got to in 2021? Maybe the word "postmortem" is too harsh? I
really don't know. Niches can be hidden away.

I checked the https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-dev/ list
archives for last 5 years or so. We have a fair amount of spam, alongside
generic smart cities and other CFP posts, and some updates from the RuleML
initiative. If there is an active public RIF community it is elsewhere
(perhaps with RuleML?). Maybe SPARQL 1.1 CONSTRUCT or OWL or procedural
code is meeting the anticipated needs of those who might have used RIF? Any
thoughts?

I'm the absence of lifesigns, we should talk about how we got here and
where to go next, perhaps. If somebody DOES want to help with the
IETF-motivated updates that of course would be wonderful and a positive
sign and I don't want to discourage that. But in parallel if anyone has
appetite to have a call or two under a "who is doing what with rule
languages for rdf data in 2021", I would be happy to help with that e.g.
chair a Zoom thing or whatever folks are using these days.

The first RDF rule/inference language proposals were back in 1998 (
https://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp.html). That's a big chunk of several of
our various lives! It would be easy to continue on autopilot updating a
(seemingly) unused spec. It might be harder for us to admit and evaluate a
collective failure, but I feel the latter could be ultimately much more
rewarding...

All the best,

Dan

On Fri, 12 Feb 2021, 21:37 Ralph Swick, <swick@w3.org> wrote:

> Philippe Le Hegaret posted a request to public-rif-dev [1] asking for
> someone willing to work with him to address comments from IANA on our
> request to register the application/rif+xml media type.  We apparently
> forgot to register this years ago before the RIF Working Group concluded.
>
> No one has yet volunteered there so PLH asked if I'd send the request to
> a wider list.  If you're willing to help but prefer to respond privately
> to either PLH or me we won't reject your offer.
>
> [[
> Sandro noted that we never registered the media type for RIF, so I
> submitted a request 2 weeks ago and received the following feedback.
> I believe the next step would be to produce a revision of the REC that
> includes the feedback. Unless I'm mistaken, we should be able to do so
> through editorial changes:
>   https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/#revised-rec-editorial
>
> I included for reference the template that I submitted at the end.
>
> Is there anyone interested in working with me to help answer questions
> and provide a revision?
>
> Philippe
> ]]
>
> See [1] for the details of the IANA comments.
>
> -Ralph
>
> [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-dev/2021Jan/0010.html
>
>