Re: shared identifiers, sameAs [ was Re: Blank nodes must DIE! [ was Re: Blank nodes semantics - existential variables?]]

Hi List,

On Sat, Jul 04, 2020 at 12:35:56PM +0100, Hugh Glaser wrote:

> "requires a hosted domain that will live for a long time" - the domain doesn't need to be hosted, can disappear the next day, or even never exist:- the URI will be stable in the sense of not changing "meaning"; it just won't resolve.
>
> not resolving is not necessarily a problem - IDs themselves are useful.
> [...]
> and in any case, given a source of sameAs chains with a URI in it where one actually resolves, a "meaning" of that URI, in terms of resolving, can always be established.
> [...]
> It's only when someone else (or you subsequently) decide to use that URI for another, and different, resource do we get a problem, especially if a new document gets put at the corresponding URL.
> [...]
> URIs in a proper identifier ecosystem have astonishing longevity.
> [...]

+1. Thank you for writing it down. I had the same thought but never
read it.

The Web is "just" a naming system. For 10€/year you get a domain name
and secure you own namespace where you can put the names your create
and share with others. There are many other naming systems (ISBN, DOI,
phone numbers, etc) but in these systems you have to ask a central
authority for new identifiers. With the Web, once you have a domain
name, you don't need to ask anything.

If you want to be helpful to others, you will make your identifiers
resolve to data (or html), but as said, resolvability is not mandatory
for your identifiers to be useful and if you have a chain of
equivalent identifiers (for example with sameAs), you can easily
script a migration from old to new IDs. I agree that the real problem
is when someone reuses a domain name for something else and creates
the same identifiers to name other things. That's when a real
collision occurs.

-- 
Nicolas Chauvat

logilab.fr - services en informatique scientifique et gestion de connaissances

Received on Monday, 6 July 2020 08:30:12 UTC