Re: ISSUE 5.14: Revised proposal to close ontology versioning

Dan,

I had originally responded to your suggestions in [1], perhaps you
missed 
that message? In particular, regarding versionOf, I said:

> While I think that something like this is an excellent idea for tech
> reports, I think it could be dangerous for ontologies. First, of all
> what is the generic ontology? Is it just the most recent version, as is
> done with tech reports? If so, then if people start using this namespace
> and importing this ontology, what happens when a modification is made
> that isn't backward compatible? Essentially, it would "break" existing
> documents. I'd much rather document authors to be explicit about what
> version of an ontology they commit to, and put the burden on them to
> upgrade at whatever pace they feel comfortable with.

Would you care to comment on this? Perhaps it would help if you gave
some more details on how you think versionOf would be used in an
ontology context.

Jeff

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Nov/0256.html

Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 2002-12-02 at 16:10, Jeff Heflin wrote:
> >
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > Based on feedback via e-mail and the telecon of 11/21, here is a revised
> > proposal for ontology versioning. This message is divided into the core
> > proposal, and two options about how it should be included in OWL.
> >
> >
> > CORE PROPOSAL
> > ---------------
> > I propose to add the following identifiers to the OWL namespace:
> >
> > priorVersion
> > backCompatWith
> > deprecatedClass
> > deprecatedProperty
> 
> hmm... still no versionOf, i.e. no
> relationship between a specific version
> and the generic thing that it's a version of, as
> I requested 20 Nov.
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2002Nov/0242.html
> 
> Everything else about this proposal looks fine, but
> I still think versionOf is as important as
> priorVersion.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > OPTIONS:
> > Two options have been suggested for how this proposal would be
> > incorporated into OWL.
> >
> > Option #1:
> > -----------
> > Make the proposal normative. The reference, guide, and feature synopsis
> > would be updated appropriately.
> >
> > Option #2:
> > ----------
> > Make the proposal non-normative.
> 
> I don't see any motivation for option 2 at all.
> 
> > [1] http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE/
> --
> Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Tuesday, 3 December 2002 10:08:59 UTC