On 9 Jul 2008, at 10:28, Hugh Glaser wrote:
Thanks guys, a really interesting and important discussion.
However, after the last couple of postings I have the feeling I may
agree
with both of you.
Is that possible?
Why not?
How's this for a manifesto:
1) It sucks not to have common mapping infrastructure in the semantic
web languages that is both simple and robust.
2) sameAs does some things one would want from a mapping
infrastructure, thus people will tend to use it regardless of any
subsequent issues
3) Something Should Be Done.
Note on 2, if sameAs gets hijacked it gets hijacked. C'est la
technical vie. However, I would think that it's pretty inadequate
even as a substitute, so, there's still some technical work (both in
developing language/infrastructure and in developing methodologies)
to be done.
To succeed in solving this problem, there really needs to be some
organizational force. I started an essay on OWLED:
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~bparsia/owled.html
A few choice quotes:
"""the point is to advance the state of the deployed art"""
"""I like OWLED to be a conversation between users, implementors,
theorists, and other stakeholders. The main goal is to advance the
state of OWL. Communication is important, but so is action. As much
as possible, I like OWLED to work from consensus to produce
substantial changes.""""
""""Obviously, OWLED cannot channel the entire OWL community. But it
has been a surprisingly coherent voice and I think a voice with a
great deal of legitimacy. Obviously, it bears the stamp, both direct
and indirect, of those who have organized it, and of the steering
committee. But more it bears the stamp of those willing to do work.
It's fine to come show off your stuff and try to attract users.
That's a great thing to do. But if you want to get other people to do
work (e.g., produce/support a W3C submission or implement your
extensions in their reasoner) you have to do a lot of work. You have
to show that its not so hard to implement and that it will, in fact,
be widely used. Being an implementor of a serious system (or working
with one) helps! Having funding (and labor) to share also helps."""
"""If something can help grow the community, people will tend to
support it if there is a clearly sensible path to doing so."""
This particular task is pretty far down my personal list for two
reasons: 1) I've a lot of a lot on my plate and 2) I don't see any
core community with the wherewithal to purse this. I suggest RDF-EDs
pretty regularly and offer to help out but no joy.
Cheers,
Bijan.
