- From: Frank Manola <fmanola@verizon.net>
- Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2019 12:00:55 -0400
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: Frank Manola <fmanola@verizon.net>, Graham Klyne <gk@ninebynine.org>, Antoine Zimmermann <antoine.zimmermann@emse.fr>, semantic-web <semantic-web@w3.org>
My assumption about why it was rdf:type rather than rdfs:type was always that it enabled “plain rdf" to refer to “type systems” or terminologies other than RDFS; e.g., you could make up your own, or borrow someone else’s, without the need to involve (or even mention) RDFS at all. This at a time when it wasn’t clear that any particular way of defining classes was going to “catch on”. —Frank > On Jun 29, 2019, at 2:01 AM, Patrick J Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote: > > Hi all. > > My recollection from the first WG was that the namespaces had been defined back in 1999; that there was a strong cultural prefernce for not changing any names unless there were overwhelmingly good reasons for making the change; and that the rdf/rdfs distinction was not considered to be particularly significant. I recall this issue coming up in WG discussions early on in the WG activity, and it being dismissed as unimportant. > > There was (is?) a rationale which one can appeal to, a distinction between a base logic and a (rather simple) ontology of classes. But then it is rather hard to explain why rdf:type (which is the semantic device which introduces classes) isn’t rdfs:type. > > Pat >
Received on Saturday, 29 June 2019 16:01:23 UTC