> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tim Bray > Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 10:14 AM > To: Bill de h�ra > Cc: 'Atom WG' > Subject: Re: Atom extensibility, RDF, and GRDDL
--snip-- > The people who insist that you have to have to buy into a > graph-theoretical KR model to be able to use the word "extensible" live > in a universe that is self-consistent, but it's not the one where I > work. -Tim Having stepped back from both Atom and RDF a bit during the last few months, in part because I want to make sure I'm not wearing X-coloured glasses too often, but also because I find that I get too invested in and stressed out by some of the more heated discussions :), I've been trying to avoid jumping into this thread, but think its about time that I chime in and make my feelings known on this subject. It has long been apparent that the Atom community is not ready for RDF. While much of the industry is finally starting to see the benefits of semantic web technology, hence the emergence of terms like "semantic integration" (as an evolutionary step beyond current data integration techniques/tools/etc.), Atom and its community just aren't there yet. RDF is unfortunately one of those things that is difficult to understand until you've been bitten by one or more of the issues that it addresses and find yourself in a position to "get it". Once you need it, you "get it". Once you've "gotten it", you use it. Once you've "gotten it", it also becomes frustrating to watch other people suffer while not "getting it". You have the Atom community on one side, looking at RDF and thinking "the syntax is dumb, the model is unnecessary, XML is enough." Then you have the RDF pundits on the other side thinking "How can these guys not get it yet?" And this isn't meant to slight the Atom community in the least. The Atom community doesn't get it yet because it hasn't needed it yet, and unfortunately, as I mentioned before, RDF is one of those things that is hard to really "get" until you really need it [1]. And, as I've come to feel over the last few months, this can actually be seen as a _good thing_: Atom (or its successor) will adapt to (or simply somewhat align with) RDF when its community "gets it", which will occur if and only if / when and only when they _need_ it. The problem is that in the meantime most of the arguments from the RDF pundits are not only largely misunderstood or just seen as irrelevant, they act _against_ the intentions of the RDF pundits by coming off as the rantings of zealots of those want codified things that are obvious and who live in some strange world where everything is a graph. Not that this is the case, just that it ends up appearing as such. And I can safely say both of these because I am one of those zealots. :) With that in mind, here's what I would suggest: Henry, keep posting your periodic messages trying to softly help people understand RDF (and OWL, as many of your posts rely on it). Everyone seems to have missed how your most recent posts showed that an OWL reasoner and the rules provided to it would keep an application from even having to _implement_ logic to decide what entries should be merged or kept separate, and they all seemed to miss the fact that the included locations could be deemed equivalent and then merge together any information and/or relations ascribed to each of the two expressed locations. These are worthwhile things for people to understand, so keep at it. At least one of us needs to keep trying to help the community "get it", and in recent months I feel you have been doing the best job delivering that message in a clear, even-handed fashion. In general, the RDF pundits need to step back and recognize that until such time as the community has been bitten, needs, and subsequently "gets" the semweb, the best thing you can do is recognize that an RDF version of Atom will need to be created as a mapping, that mappings will also need to be created for any Atom extensions, and to spend your time helping Atom (and its extension authors) avoid doing things that will directly hamper RDF mapping efforts. Get working on those mappings, keep them in sync, keep the feedback loop going between the main effort and the mapping efforts, and work to create apps that will help the community edge closer to "getting it". Jeremy [1] This is worsened by the fact that the specification documents were largely HORRIBLE for several years, and because the intentions behind and syntax resulting from the RDF/XML effort is often misunderstood, but those are subjects for another place and time. :D
