OWL is a Proposed Recommendation!

I was going to let Dan Connolly have pride of announcement, but I 
cannot wait anymore --  the following is from [1]:

15 December 2003: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the 
OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) to Proposed Recommendation. Comments 
are invited through 19 January. OWL is used to publish and share sets 
of terms called ontologies, supporting advanced Web search, software 
agents and knowledge management. Read about the Semantic Web 
Activity. The OWL language is presented in six parts:     * Overview 
- A simple introduction     * Guide - Demonstrates OWL through an 
extended example. Provides a glossary     * Reference - A compact, 
informal description of OWL modelling primitives     * Semantics and 
Abstract Syntax - Normative definition of the OWL language     * Test 
Cases - Test cases illustrating correct OWL usage, the formal meaning 
of constructs, and resolution of issues. Specifies conformance     * 
Use Cases and Requirements - Usage scenarios, goals and requirements 
for a Web ontology language

The member only announcement, which you should bring to the attention 
of your AC representatives is at [2] -- at the risk of 
"electioneering" let me suggest that you ALL need to ask your AC reps 
to look at this and consider voting in favor -- make your group's 
participation on this WG count!
  -JH
p.s. RDF Core documents went to PR at almost exactly the same time - 
please feel free to make your reps aware of that as well (I won't 
tell you how to vote, but you can guess what I would say :->)
[1] http://www.w3.org/News/2003#item203
[2] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2003OctDec/0046.html 
(members only)

-- 
Professor James Hendler			  http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler 
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-277-3388 (Cell)