Re: horst-01 bug

From: Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hpl.hp.com>
Subject: horst-01 bug
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 11:34:48 +0300

> 
> Hi Herman
> 
> this is a personal msg, and not on behalf of RDF Core.
> 
> I would find it helpful to understand your opinion and/or Peter's concerning 
> an informal discussion between some members of RDF core concerning how to fix 
> the bug you detected.
> 
> This is minuted in:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Jun/0154
> 
> Summary:
> **
> The current design has extensional definitions of subClassOf and
> subPropertyOf.
> ...
> This could be changed to intensional definitions
> ...
> transitivity and reflexivity can be achieved by fiat:
> ...
> permit
> semantic extensions to add back in the extensional reading of subClassOf and
> subPropertyOf.
> **
> 
> 
> I cc this message to www-archive, feel free to copy any response to any 
> appropriate mailing list.
> 
> thanks
> 
> Jeremy

Well, this would amount to making a substantial change to a normative part
of the RDF Semantics in response to a bug in an informative part of the RDF
Semantics.   From a process point of view this seems to me to be
exceedingly strange.  

As far as the change itself goes I have no opinion on whether it is a good
change or not.  However, if this change were to be made changes would have
to be made to the OWL Semantics, either to put back in the extensional
flavour of subClass and subProperty, just as is currently done for domain
and range, or to use OWL versions of subClass and subProperty, as was done
for DAML+OIL.  I believe that either of these approaches would have to be
voted on by the WebOnt WG.

peter

Received on Monday, 23 June 2003 07:23:19 UTC