Dear All,
Although I enjoy the discussion I believe we are in the danger of
digressing. Let me recap: We started to discuss a list of gatekeeping
conditions that each ontology that is part of the ontology *must* meet,
and this discussion thread is about the "openness clause" of this list.
(The list of gatekeeping conditions, including a short summary of the
discussion about "openness" is available here
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2008_QualityAndGatekeeping (01)
).
Given this context, any arguments about the benefits of open processes
seem to me irrelevant. Let me put it this way: even the best argument
for the advantages of chocolate ice cream would not be a reasonable
argument for a prohibition of vanilla ice cream. The same applies in our
situation: There are very good arguments to be made for creating
ontologies that are 'open' in a sense that meets all of the requirements
(i-v). However, these arguments have no relevance to the question at
hand: namely whether we want to make (i-v) necessary conditions and thus
ban all ontologies that don't fulfill them from the OOR. (02)
Barry summarized very well what the goal of gatekeeping is: "if an OOR
is to be useful, then potential users need to have reliable
expectations as to what it will contain". The question that we need to
answer is: In order to archive this goal of gatekeeping, do we have to
ban all ontologies that don't meet (i-v)? Or would it be sufficient --
as Matthew suggests -- to include in the description of an ontology
clear statements on whether or not (or to what extent) the conditions
(i-v) are met? Or do we need something in between (e.g. ban all
ontologies that are not published under an 'open' license and include in
the description whether the development process is 'open')? (03)
Another way of achieving reliable expectations might be to divide the
repository into two parts: the "Open Ontology Repository" and the
"Extended Ontology Repository". The former would contain only ontologies
that are open in a very strict sense (e.g. meeting all of the conditions
(i-v)). The latter would include ontologies which meet all other
gatekeeping requirements except for the strict openness criterion and
provide clear statements to which extend they do not meet the openness
criterion. (04)
Best
Fabian (05)
Bill Bug wrote:
> Sorry to add more to the thread, but I believe Rex is making an
> important point worth highlighting. Some of what I say below builds
> on comments by others, including the post John Sowa has just made in
> response to Barry.
>
> Rex makes the point:
>
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 9:31 AM, Rex Brooks wrote:
>> Participation does not imply that everyone's contribution will be
>> included in an open ontology
>
> This - along with the statement "cooperative" - implies that an
> ontology, to meet these criteria, needs must have a "governing" body
> of some sort, probably also establish a developer role for the active,
> contributing participants, and then a means whereby the governing body
> can decide how to admit new "developers" to the group, which would
> likely include having that person agree to conform to a set of rules
> for participating developers. Contributions would then be accepted by
> "developers" based on a vetting process that involves the
> participation of the collective of "developers" in part or whole.
> This is in fact the process we've adopted in the development of the
> Ontology of Biomedical Investigation (OBI) - and to some extent, the
> Biomedical Informatics Research Network ontology, BIRNLex.
>
> Given the level of work and complexity this implies, we certainly
> shouldn't expect all ontologies of value to an OOR will fully conform
> to such a process. This implies the need for participating OOR
> ontologies to provide some description of their level or means of
> coming into conformance with these desired requirements, so that users
> can judge for themselves, whether they can afford to commit to using a
> given ontology - essentially the suggestion by John and others that an
> OOR would need to focus specifically on tracking the metadata related
> to prior use and conformance to these recommended practices -
>
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 9:47 AM, John F. Sowa wrote:
>> ... a repository ... (needs to) contain a large amount of metadata,
>> among which would be records about who developed, used, revised, and
>> extended it and the results that were obtained in various applications.
>
> Ideally, there would even be an OOR review board that could use a
> coding scheme to evaluate these descriptions, so that the OOR
> repository could include some scoring metric as an aid to users. An
> OOR review board would also be responsible for providing some
> advice/guidance on how to remediate issues that result in poor scores,
> based on existing examples of other OOR ontologies that have dealt
> better with the requirement at issue. For example, I believe this is
> one of the intended activities for the OBO Foundry reviewers being
> assembled.
>
> Building on John's point cited above, I'd then go back to my statement
> regarding the uses of ontologies - a very "thin" view for certain
> given the depth of experience of Ontolog participants. Still, one
> could use a general list of use cases as a means of specifying how an
> ontology with a particular set of scores might fair when applied to
> that application domain (this is a non-trivial issue, but one where at
> least a limited amount of useful advice might be possible). This
> would help potential users to determine - depending on their intended
> application (e.g., broadly scoped data annotation and
> federation/integration, tightly scoped decision support, NLP/Text
> Mining, e-Commerce data exchange, controlled UI design, etc.) and
> their potential participation as developers of an ontology based on
> their semantic domain coverage requirements (scope & granularity) -
> whether a given ontology would suit their purposes.
>
> Cheers,
> Bill
>
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 9:31 AM, Rex Brooks wrote:
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I thought the idea was to discuss these issues on the appropriate
>> lists as much as possible so as the make the most effective use of
>> our time together in conference. I certainly disapprove of hoarding
>> our opinions until we get a chance to play tag with the floor on a
>> concall that goes an hour or more beyond the time we have allotted
>> for it. We have an active community here. The point is that we need
>> to get our opinions out for examination before we have live
>> interchange.
>>
>> I like i-v with the caveat that ii needs to be in a subversion-type
>> environment with a clear decision-making process for what is included
>> in the ontology, or else in some well-established and transparent
>> process. Participation does not imply that everyone's contribution
>> will be included in an open ontology. A transparent process only
>> means that the public can view/listen/access the documents and
>> recordings involved in the process.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Rex
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I would strongly agree with Fabian's suggestion we table some of
>>> this discussion for the meeting.
>>>
>>> Personally, I find i - v precisely what I'd hope to get from an
>>> "open" ontology repository (OOR) [with the exception that
>>> "virtually" in 'v' may lead to a lack of clarity], but I've no
>>> intension of dragging everyone over the coals of this long thread
>>> again, as many insightful points pro & con have been thoroughly
>>> presented. As Matthew suggests, we all bring an agenda to the table
>>> that needs must color our sense of what would truly make an OOR more
>>> a valued resource than a hindrance to gaining wider acceptance and
>>> use for the ontologies it contains.
>>>
>>> Many thanks for the concise and clear summary, Fabian. :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Bill Bug
>>>
>>> On Mar 17, 2008, at 1:19 PM, Fabian Neuhaus wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Okay, let me try to summarize. Everybody, please let me know if I
>>>> misrepresented your position.
>>>>
>>>> We are discussing the scope of the OOR, thus the minimal
>>>> requirements an
>>>> ontology has to meet.
>>>>
>>>> Peter Yim and Ravi Sharma suggest the following:
>>>> (i) the ontology is based on open standards AND
>>>> (ii) an ontology that is created and maintained in a cooperative
>>>> process
>>>> that is, in principle, open to everybody who wants to participate AND
>>>> (iii) an ontology that is created and maintained in a transparent
>>>> process AND
>>>> (iv) the ontology is accessible to all who can be identified or
>>>> authenticated (at least Read only) AND
>>>> (v) the ontology is available under a license that includes
>>>> virtually no
>>>> restrictions on the use and distribution of the ontology.
>>>>
>>>> [I assume that a standard is considered to be "open" if and only if it
>>>> meets analogs of criteria (ii)-(v), FN]
>>>>
>>>> Matthew West objects to (v).
>>>> Pat Hayes objects to (ii) and (iii).
>>>>
>>>> It seems to me that this discussion won't be resolved easily. If nobody
>>>> objects, I will put it on the list of topics to be discussed on the
>>>> Ontological Summit during the "Quality and Gatekeeping" section.
>>>>
>>>> Best
>>>> Fabian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Pat Hayes wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> At 12:09 AM +0000 3/15/08,
>>>>> <<mailto:matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx>matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx
>>>>> <mailto:matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear Pat,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The first. Only the ISO has this absurd policy of
>>>>>>> charging cash for standards;
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: There are others.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: But lets be precise about this. The problem has its
>>>>>> roots in ISO essentially seeing itself as a publishing house.
>>>>>> That at least is how it gets its income. The up side is that it
>>>>>> does not charge to participate in standards development. Try the
>>>>>> OMG charges if you want to see how much that can be, even if
>>>>>> their specs are free to users (or W3C for that matter).
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't see why that matters, in the case of ontologies. The process
>>>>> that gave rise to ontology is really not of any relevance: what
>>>>> matters is the final product and the ability to use it. That is what
>>>>> we should be focused upon.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: Now I think that ISO is outdated in thinking like this, and
>>>>>> many of us are trying to persuade them to change, but that is
>>>>>> still the current situation.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: Now, in ISO TC184/SC4 we have managed to get dispensation
>>>>>> to make all the computer interpretable stuff, i.e. what you need
>>>>>> to implement the standard. So suppose someone makes their
>>>>>> OWL ontology available free, but then publishes a book through
>>>>>> a publisher (who naturally charges for it) explaining its use.
>>>>>> How would you see that?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> If the same source published the book and the ontology, and if the
>>>>> book was the only 'manual' or documentation available, I think this
>>>>> would be close to inadmissible, and certainly bad practice. The issue
>>>>> here is not charging for the book, but withholding what should be
>>>>> part of the openly accessible ontology itself.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> How would that be different from what
>>>>>> ISO TC 184/SC4 does.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> moreover, I would
>>>>>>> not say that Matthew's interpretation of 'open'
>>>>>>> is universally accepted. The W3C is not open in
>>>>>>> this sense, for example.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: Indeed I would certainly NOT see W3C as open. This concerned
>>>>>> some enough that they moved to OASIS.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But the results of the W3C process are openly available to anyone
>>>>> without any payment, which for standard adoption is surely the main
>>>>> point. Agencies pay a membership fee to join the W3C, but that makes
>>>>> sense to me: parties that are interested enough to want to influence
>>>>> a standard for commercial reasons tend to be those that can easily
>>>>> afford such membership fees. And the process is 'open' in the sense
>>>>> of being conducted in public: all the email archives, minutes of
>>>>> meetings. etc. are publicly available and archived.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Is the OOR supposed restricted to ontologies that are developed
>>>>>>>> in an
>>>>>>>> open process and come with very light weight copyright
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> licenses (e.g. *
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Creative Commons Attribution )?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Certainly the latter. Lets take a stand on this.
>>>>>>> It does not eliminate ISO participation, but it
>>>>>>> does require them to make any relevant standards
>>>>>>> freely available. They can do this, and have done
>>>>>>> it in the past.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: Indeed, see above.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Putting something into the OOR
>>>>>>> should make it automatically available for access
>>>>>>> and use without restriction; like the GNU
>>>>>>> licences, it should not permit other copyright
>>>>>>> restrictions to be 'passed through' its open
>>>>>>> policy.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Or is OOR open for all ontologies that are developed in an
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> open process
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> regardless of their copyright license?
>>>>>>>> Would the OOR be open for ontologies that are developed and
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> maintained
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> by a group of people who don't want to participate in an open
>>>>>>>> process
>>>>>>>> but are willing to publish their ontology as a freely
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> available resource
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> for the community?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I have no problem with that part. We should
>>>>>>> permit ontologies that were constructed by one
>>>>>>> person in total privacy, or written on stone
>>>>>>> tablets by God, as long as they are freely
>>>>>>> available for public use without restriction.
>>>>>>> This is what 'open' means in 'open cyc', for
>>>>>>> example.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: I think the lack of an open process is a problem
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Why? If someone writes a useful ontology, or one is developed by a
>>>>> small team, what possible harm can there be in making this publicly
>>>>> available?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> ,
>>>>>> but I'm actually prepared to be more permissive.
>>>>>> For most of these issues above, I think the most
>>>>>> important thing is to be clear about what the
>>>>>> situation is. So there is a clear statement as to
>>>>>> whether:
>>>>>> - There is an open process for development
>>>>>> - How much do you have to pay to participate in that process?
>>>>>> - What is free, and what is not, and how much that is
>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: I do not suffer from the illusion that there are
>>>>>> no costs in developing an ontology. The only real
>>>>>> question is what is the business model?
>>>>>> - pay to join the development organization
>>>>>> - donate own time and resources to contribute
>>>>>> - sell services based on deliverables
>>>>>> - pay for deliverables
>>>>>> - ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> MW: In fact what I dislike most are the organizations
>>>>>> that charge for membership to participate in development.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, in defense of the W3C, it has managed to extract a quite
>>>>> remarkable amount of participation from me without my paying a red
>>>>> cent. On the other hand, I havn't been paid a red cent, either.
>>>>>
>>>>> Pat
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>> William Bug, M.S., M.Phil.
>>>
>>> email: <mailto:wbug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wbug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> <mailto:wbug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> Ontological Engineer
>>> work: (610) 457-0443
>>> Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN)
>>> and
>>> National Center for Microscopy &
>>> Imaging Research (NCMIR)
>>> Dept. of Neuroscience, School of Medicine
>>> University of California, San Diego
>>> 9500 Gilman Drive
>>> La Jolla, CA 92093
>>>
>>> Please note my email has recently changed
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Rex Brooks
>> President, CEO
>> Starbourne Communications Design
>> GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison
>> Berkeley, CA 94702
>> Tel: 510-898-0670
>>
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>
> William Bug, M.S., M.Phil.
> email: wbug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:wbug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Ontological Engineer work: (610) 457-0443
> Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN)
> and
> National Center for Microscopy &
> Imaging Research (NCMIR)
> Dept. of Neuroscience, School of Medicine
> University of California, San Diego
> 9500 Gilman Drive
> La Jolla, CA 92093
>
> Please note my email has recently changed
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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