Re: [whatwg] Creative Commons Rights Expression Language

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2008, Dan Brickley wrote:
>> I'm sure a small group of these could be assembled to discuss an 
>> RDFa-for-HTML5 proposal, should one be made.
> 
> I would be very interested in taking part in such discussions. I would 
> in particular like to see discussion of:
> 
>  * What the problem being addressed is.
> 
>  * What research shows that it is an important enough problem that it 
>    should be addressed.
> 
>  * What the requirements are.

Ian,

Can you point to examples of this process for other features that have
been added? Say, for example, what is the research that shows that a SQL
database within the browser is really needed and is important enough
"for the bulk of users"?

I'm worried that "important enough" is quite a subjective measure, but
if I see other examples, maybe I can get a better idea.

> As you say, I don't think we have a shared vision here. In particular, 
> there have been several alusions to concepts that I do not understand at 
> all, like computers fetching information about vocabularies and doing 
> something useful with that information.

So, I'm not saying ccREL answers *all* of your questions there, but it
certainly does answer a number of them, especially with respect to
vocabulary modularity, extensibility, and evolution, with machines
reading these vocabularies and making some sense of them.

ccREL will also point you to other documents that explain this in
greater detail, including the RDF Primer.

> along with research showing why these are important problems (e.g. showing that 
> these are problems faced by the bulk of users),

This is the part that worries me the most.

Are we only trying to solve problems that the *bulk* of users know they
have? What about enabling new solutions that will provide a new category
of solutions that the bulk of users can't quite put their finger on?
That a number of publishers can see would be super useful...

Also, what does "bulk" mean, more precisely?

> So far, I have not felt like we have an agreement on what the problems we 
> should be solving are, which makes it hard to discuss proposals.

I'm confused: the ccREL paper lists *exactly* the problems that CC is
facing, and they are quite similar to those of other promoters of RDFa.

Is the ccREL paper not clear? Do you disagree with it? Please tell me more.

-Ben

Received on Sunday, 24 August 2008 16:21:52 UTC