Suggestions for process: (01)
(1) any decisions that cannot be reached by consensus
should be decided by majority vote. This requires
a list of registered voting members. (I Suggest
that any motion and two seconds can force a vote).
Don't mess with Robert's rules, they were designed
for live meetings. We can make up our own
rules.
(2) we may need an "executive committee" of members
who are willing to commit to some significant
allocation of time -- perhaps 5% of full-time
(13 full days out of the year)??
(3) First order of business should be decision on a
format for representing the logical ontology.
I would suggest KIF (or SKIF), and perhaps also
OWL, since that seems to be where the Semantic Web
community is heading. If OWL is not yet ready
for serious use (I have no experience at all with
description logics), perhaps LOOM?
This gets into issues of ease of use. As best
I can tell, to use LOOM requires that one install
a LISP environment (are there executable versions?)
This would inhibit the wide use of the ontology.
KIF files can be written by word processor,
and they serve to record the intended meanings of
concepts adequately.
(4) Second order of business would be adopting one or
more tools to make the development easier. I like
Protege, though I only use its simplest features.
If JESS is recommended, I hope that any of us (like me)
who have no experience yet with JAVA can have time
to learn how to handle it.
(5) I would suggest a maximum of one month to decide
these two questions. Immediately thereafter,
I would hope we can begin discussion of
(a) the content of the ontology, starting with
the structure of the topmost levels, and resolution
of questions such as how to handle relations, roles,
abstract objects, and granularity (with special
reference to how they apply to the business domain);
(b) a decision on whether only one structure will be
allowed, or whether alternative representations
will be allowed, providing that they are logically
compatible and convertible to each other; and
(c) the applications(s) that would be used to help
keep decisions focused on usability rather than
theoretical issues. I hope that at least one
natural-language application will be developed.
Does anyone work with a parser available for free? (02)
As examples of existing ontologies, Open CYC and
the SUMO developed as part of the IEEE-Standard Upper
Ontology discussions provide different views. Others
such as SENSUS and Mikrokosmos exist, but are less
easily available. I have made a crude conversion of
the Open CYC and SUMO into Protege format -- this
provides only the class hierarchy and the attached
slots, but does not display relations of order greater
than 2 (including binary or higher functions), nor
does it display the subsumption relations among
the slots. It does provide a good visual display
of the general structure of the ontology. The
Protege files can be found in the directory:
ftp://micra.com/ontolog
I am not certain that this conversion is permitted by
the CYC permissions, but is seems to be, under the GNU
GPL provisions, according to the license paragraph:
> The OpenCyc Knowledge Base
> The OpenCyc Knowledge Base consists of code, written in the
> declarative language CycL, that represents or supports the
> representation of facts and rules pertaining to consensus reality.
> OpenCyc is licensed using the GNU Lesser General Public License,
> whose text can also be found here. The OpenCyc CycL code base is
> the "library" referred to in the LGPL license. The terms of this
> license equally apply to renamings and other logically equivalent
> reformulations of the Knowledge Base (or portions thereof) in any
> natural or formal language. (03)
An alternative formulation of the upper levels is contained
in the ontology I have been developing, available in Protege
format at: ftp://micra.com/process/ (files PUOCYC1.*), which
include some structures from the Open Cyc ontology. These three
ontologies provide some examples of how the upper levels can
be very different for different viewpoints. Many other
examples are available. Even for the case where we are concerned
with a particular domain, such as business, I think it is
important that development of a consensus ontology begin
with agreement on the main relations and the topmost levels
of the ontology. (04)
Pat (05)
=============================================
Patrick Cassidy (06)
MICRA, Inc. || (908) 561-3416
735 Belvidere Ave. || (908) 668-5252 (if no answer)
Plainfield, NJ 07062-2054 || (908) 668-5904 (fax) (07)
internet: cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
=============================================
============================================= (08)
Bob Smith wrote:
> Kurt, Thanks for the excellent summary!!!
>
> The 1-2:30pm Weds slot works for me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Bob Smith
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kurt Conrad
> Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 11:54 PM
> To: Ontolog Forum
> Subject: [ontolog-forum] UBL Process and Project Management
>
>
> All,
>
> Please respond to this thread with process and project management
> options for the UBL Ontology Project.
>
> For reference purposes, a summary of the ideas which have already
> been raised in some form can be found at:
>
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2003-03/msg00045.html#nid025
>
> /s/ kwc 2003.03.06 23:53
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Kurt Conrad
> 2994 Salem Dr. 408-247-0454
> Santa Clara, CA 95051-5502 408-247-0457 (data/fax)
> http://www.SagebrushGroup.com mailto:conrad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
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> (09)
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