Proposal: Organization dissolutionDate

I propose adding a single property "dissolutionDate" to the Organization class.

The Organization class already has a foundingDate property.

Of the words used to describe the end of an organization, "dissolution" seems to be the most appropriate in terms of meaning, usage and geographic coverage. Other words include "liquidation", "termination" and "cessation". Liquidation implies a particular process that not all organizations necessarily go through when they end. In most cases, dissolution and termination are synonymous. However, in the case of partnerships, dissolution may sometimes refer to the date on which the legal entity ceases operation, but before it is officially would up and terminated. I believe in most cases, users care about the date on which operations end, not the date on which all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed on all paperwork relating to the dissolution. Cessation may be confused with a business temporarily becoming inactive and then resuming activity. "Dissolution" seems to be the best term.

Prior work includes vCard 4.0, which has a DEATHDATE property [1], but that doesn't fit semantically with organizations, because organizations do not "die". There is also the dateOfTermination property defined by [2] and [3] below.

Here is the proposal in the wiki: http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/dissolutionDate#Usage

James

1. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6474#section-2.3
2. http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/gnd#dateOfTermination
3. http://metadataregistry.org/schemaprop/show/id/852.html