Re: The Vocabulary, Schema.org governance, etc.

Peter makes an excellent point. In the past, before schema.org, when Google
approached the W3C with Sitemaps and later with data-vocabulary, we were
told that W3C does not do vocabularies, any more than it does websites.

We also realized that we wanted to depart from some of the principles of
linked data (URIs for everything) and languages like RDF (single domain /
range). It is not clear we could have done such things as a W3C WG.

While I have the greatest respect for the W3C and especially for folks like
Ralph, Sandro and Phil, the W3C Working Group process is not suited for
something like schema.org. For example, we interact extensively with many
content providers in designing particular schemas. These folks often don't
have the time or interest (or, sometimes, funds) to participate in working
groups. And as the recent exchange re the Social Working Group
demonstrated, non WG folks can't even talk during WG meetings. So, in that
sense, we are a lot more open.

Guha

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 6:25 AM, Peter Mika <pmika@yahoo-inc.com> wrote:

> Hi Renato,
>
> The W3C in particular did not want to take on vertical vocabulary projects
> in the past. Tim B-L emphasized in multiple talks that the W3C would like
> to focus on developing ontology languages, and let industry develop
> vertical solutions. (To me the examples you mentioned such as SKOS and
> PROV are part of the language infrastructure.)
>
> schema.org is such a vertical solution based on the needs of large web
> consumers.
>
> Best,
> Peter
>
>
>
>