Re: Using third-party vocabularies

At 01:22 PM 12/5/02 +0000, Brian McBride wrote:
>At 12:14 05/12/2002 +0000, Graham Klyne wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>
>>What the previous text does not say, and concerning which there was a 
>>comment on the Concepts document,
>
>Reference please.  What was the comment?

It's logged, with links, at:
   http://www.ninebynine.org/wip/DocIssues/RDF-Concepts/022-SocialMeaning.html

The comment being:
[[
Similarly, the tying of the meaning of a URI to the ill-specified
intent of some organization poses a giant bar to the deployment of
RDF.  Under these circumstances how can any organization use an URI
that they do not own?  The owning organization might, after all,
choose to change the meaning of any URI they own at any time.  This
seems to me to be a bar to any communication between organizations
using RDF.
]]

>>  is that even though third-party vocabularies are generally 
>> unconstrained by opthers who may use them, there may yet be some that 
>> are sufficiently well-trusted for serious use.  If you don't want to go 
>> into legal territory, the final sentence might be pared down to, say:
>>
>>[[
>>For important documents this may mean that use of third-party vocabulary 
>>is restricted to terms defined by reputable organizations (e.g. 
>>recognized standards bodies), or that otherwise have socially 
>>well-established meanings.
>>]]
>
>Right, that avoids the pitfall I mentioned, but I'm still wondering why a 
>normative spec would be saying anything of the form  "There might be ..."

OK, let's try again:

[[
For important documents, the use of third-party vocabulary should be 
restricted to terms defined by trustworthy parties (e.g. recognized 
standards bodies or reputable organizations), or that otherwise have 
socially well-established meanings.
]]

#g


-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK@NineByNine.org>

Received on Thursday, 5 December 2002 13:12:32 UTC