[vcard] An ontology for vCards

Following a few rounds of private discussion about vCard/hCard/FOAF
and related ontologies for describing people, a group of us met[1] on
#swig[2] to talk about "People in RDF"[3].

At that meeting, it was decided[4] that we'd create a new namespace
for this ontology:

  http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns

and that Harry Halpin, Brian Suda, and I would work to develop and
maintain a specification for it with the help of the semantic web
community.

I've now checked in a first stab at the schema and a specification
based on my earlier efforts[5]. These are just a starting point for
discussion, which we expect to carry out on this list.

Aside from a raft of editorial issues and a bunch of text to be
written, there are some hard technical decisions that have to be made.
The two that are most readily apparent to me as I write this message
are:

1. What is the relationship between this vocabulary and FOAF and how
   is that relationship described?

2. Are the cardinality constraints in the ontology reasonable and
   correct?

There are doubtless many others. Let the discussion begin!

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://chatlogs.planetrdf.com/swig/2006-11-03#T15-16-11
[2] irc://irc.freenode.net/#swig
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2006Nov/0005.html
[4] http://swig.xmlhack.com/2006/11/03/2006-11-03.html#a1162567619.883910
[5] http://norman.walsh.name/2005/12/12/vcard

-- 
Norman Walsh
XML Standards Architect
Sun Microsystems, Inc.