- From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 13:43:07 -0500
- To: www-webont-wg@w3.org
In a message expressing my concerns with the requirements document, I argued that it is premature to require that ontologies be resources, at least if by resource, we mean an RDF resource, i.e., elements of the domain of discourse that can be used just like any other element of the domain of discourse. I happen to think that it is a bad idea for ontologies to be just the same as other objects because there may be unexpected consequences of this decision. For example, if we have ontologies referring to other ontologies, making ontologies just the same a other objects gets us more than halfway to being able to have conditional referring, which can have sever computational consequences. Moreover, the justification for have ontologies as (RDF) resources is to support ontology sharing, but it is certainly possible to have ontology sharing while still making ontologies different from other objects. Therefore, the stated support for ontologies as resources is not a true support. Peter F. Patel-Schneider Bell Labs Research PS: What should we do with requirements that have no motivation?
Received on Thursday, 14 February 2002 13:43:34 UTC