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

Guha, just some anecdotal support for what you're saying; I am in the Digital Publishing Interest Group as an "invited expert" on identifiers and metadata in the book publishing domain. I very much want to join as a member, but this interest group in particular is struggling because book publishers by and large cannot make the leap to envision how web standards might apply to books (I could go on about industry myopia for weeks). Even my own company is resisting joining - they don't want to spend the money. I am having to get very creative because my "invited expert" status expires in a couple of months; and I worry for the group as a whole because much of it consists of people like me, who have to prove to our companies that this is worthwhile. We have to generate the proof before they will pay; whereas the W3C would like us to pay first and then do the work.

So as a practical matter, if development is going to get done in areas that for the most part don't have the vision to see how the web will affect their products, it's going to be difficult within W3C bylaws and policies.

From: Ramanathan Guha <guha@google.com<mailto:guha@google.com>>
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2014 at 11:17 AM
To: Peter Mika <pmika@yahoo-inc.com<mailto:pmika@yahoo-inc.com>>
Cc: "public-vocabs@w3.org<mailto:public-vocabs@w3.org>" <public-vocabs@w3.org<mailto:public-vocabs@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: The Vocabulary, Schema.org governance, etc.
Resent-From: <public-vocabs@w3.org<mailto:public-vocabs@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Thursday, September 25, 2014 at 11:17 AM

Peter makes an excellent point. In the past, before schema.org<http://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<http://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<mailto: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<http://schema.org> is such a vertical solution based on the needs of large web
consumers.

Best,
Peter