Bill,
I have been involved in some standard efforts and am well aware of how
difficult it is to achieve consensus within a volunteer group (and have
great respect for those who participate anyway). That is why the FO project
would have to (1) have a deadline and rapid voting procedure to avoid
protracted wrangling and resolve disputes quickly; anyone who can't bear
that method wouldn't participate; (2) It would be a paid effort, not a
volunteer effort, and those who participate will be committed to working
within the rules and timetable established for the project. The important
point is that we are not trying to find some universally acceptable FO, just
one that can be accepted within a community large enough to give it a proper
test in practical applications and to demonstrate that it really does enable
broad and accurate interoperability. Those who can't bear using the FO can
try any other tactic they want, it won't affect the goal of the project. I
am quite certain that there will be well over 100 very competent people
having relevant expertise who would be willing to participate in such a
funded project.
The problem now is not that we don't have a *universal* FO, but that we
don't have *any* that are being used to good effect by a broad community to
produce public programs from which we can learn how a good FO can support
interoperability. CYC could probably do that (perhaps with some additions),
but we don't have any open-source programs using CYC, and no public examples
of interoperability of independently developed programs. Providing
open-source uses of the FO from which people can learn and evaluate would be
a very important result.
It is critically important not to confuse terms with the FO; the
ontology has only logical specifications, and no matter how many different
meanings different people want to attach to some word, they can all be
specified by the logical representations of the FO, and they can all live
comfortably together in one ontology, though they would have different
labels (MySecurity, YourSecurity, HisSecurity, whatever). The meanings of
terms need not be an issue; an FO can accommodate every intended meaning.
If someone doesn't like the definition of a particular term, the term can be
abandoned and some other label used. The labels for the concepts in an FO
are only important in providing clues for the human developers to recall
what the meaning is; the meaning itself is independent of the label. Where
terms need to be standardized in applications or some group of applications,
it is for the application developers to be concerned about; *whatever*
intended meaning they decide on, it can be represented in the FO, or by
means of the FO. In an ontology development group it is never necessary to
wrangle over terms, although some may do it out of shear orneriness. (01)
Pat (02)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (03)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Burkett, William [USA]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 3:17 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Foundation Ontology Primitives
>
> [IB] > > If I have an issue with this idea, it is one of pragmatism. As
> an
> > aspiration, a common foundation ontology is something I would really
> > support. There seems to me to be a couple of practical problems:
> >
> > * Reaching consensus - ontology is a topic that attracts people with
> > strong opinions. Consensus requires compromise, and I don't see much
> of that
> > going on in this community. In my experience of developing ISO
> standards, it
> > usually requires a commercial reward to ensure true consensus is met
> -
> > i.e. they all (well, most) stop bickering if they can see some
> profitability
> > in not bickering. I don't think ontology is at the maturity level
> where
> > huge sums of money depend on its success or failure, so I fear
> consensus is
> > going to be nigh impossible.
> >
>
> [PC] That is the primary problem, but I think the difficulty has been
> greatly overestimated.
>
> Pat: I was involved in the same ISO standards process/organization that
> Ian was (Matthew was as well) and agree with him 100%, and then some,
> about the difficulty of reaching consensus. Reaching consensus on the
> meaning of terms within a diverse body of individuals is far harder
> than you may imagine regardless of the starting conditions. Have you
> participated in many group efforts aimed at standardizing the meaning
> of terms or the meaning of elements in a model? (Which is not at all
> meant to be a snide question - this is a genuine query out of
> curiosity.)
>
> Bill
>
>
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