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Re: [ontology-summit] Ontolog IPR issues

To: "Ontology Summit 2008" <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 07:02:43 -0400
Message-id: <c09b00eb0805060402y1f5d1657w3fe1c933c288d8e7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John    (01)

thanks for consideration, and I agree on your points below, which is
partly what we are discussing here.    (02)

The IPR being discussed on this list, pursuant the copyright policy of
this list of attributions rights only, means that if someone defines a
new topic, or opens up an important discussion
using this forum as a channel, such as discussions around 'open
ontology' and derived artifacts, etc etc, then has the 'right' (in IPR
terms, that is a legal, warranted by the law) of attribution - that
means their contribution to the topic should be attributed, else is an
infringement of copyright    (03)

The wiki entry on open ontology, should be read in conjunction with
the posts on this list
which were a starting point for further discussion, and papers that
are published on the web and not on the web (so what you read on the
wiki is a partial draft of a topic I developed elsewhere) and  that
constitute my early input to the topic as being developed by this
community, which later was evolved in a separate list into a larger
discussion, I claim that such contribution should be acknowledged and
attributed for such evolution to be legitimate, according to IPR
policty of this forum, where the discussion started    (04)

this is my only and main claim on this particular account, although I
have a couple of other points    (05)

If yous study the discussions in the archive (provided you are into
that kind of thing, like some of us on this list)  you will be able to
ascertain the dynamics, and the chronology and relationship of what
thread served an input to what discussions, and how they bounced away
and were remodelled into other discussions and 'the initiatives'
which was not advertised on the list in the usual manner ,e tc etc
etc,    (06)

The discussion on IPR at large however  is inevitably a much one,
especially IPR of 'open' and public  pieces of thinking exchanged on
public lists, so its good that it is coming up    (07)

You must read the IPR question in conjuction with the 'public funding'
opportunities that are arising from recent grants being allocated by
the EU and other research bodies    (08)

 - you say that putting the word open in front of everything helps to
secure funding, I say that putting the word IPR in front of everything
is part of a funding process too, as research money, especially in the
EU, is used to fund private enterprises and to foster intellectual
property.that can be then leveraged by private companies. This is
totally unacceptable to many researchers in EU, yet widely adopted and
routine practice of how EU public research money is used.
 To be able to secure some IPR is a pre-requisite to secure EU
funding, as it grants the opportunity of spin offs, We still dont know
how the oor initiative differs from oor efforts being put together at
the summit, under ontology shared ipr policy, which is another point
of contention - but it could be legitimately being seen as a posible
spin off  - especially considering that it is not being discussed
publicly and with the open input of the community    (09)

etc etc etc    (010)

I dont know how long you have been on this list (do you remember the
date when you joined?) but yes please study the archives
to understand  on the dynamics and chronology  of the open ontology
and subsequent oor discussions that are being contended on this thread    (011)

and yes, lets talk in general about the systemic conflicts of how IPR
policies and  practices
of public discussion forums conflict with the exploitation policies
that are at the heart of research and industry today, cause that is
the crux of the matter here it seems to me    (012)

cheers
PDM    (013)

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 2:35 AM, John Bateman <bateman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> All,
>
>  I must admit to having considerable problems with attempts to gain
>  some kind of preemptive secure access rights to terms that are
>  in the process of becoming established usage, especially
>  terms that have a compositional semantics. Case in
>  point: "open ontology". Even worse are attempts that
>  then may make certain transparently compositional
>  expressions unusable without invoking risk of
>  complaint. 'Open ontology' has been a buzzword going
>  round for at least a couple of years as far as I can
>  recall, probably earlier. I am involved in a European
>  Union project whose explicit aim is to create an
>  (open) platform for developing and distributing
>  (open) ontologies (as Paola knows I believe).
>  Recently it has been necessary to put the adjective
>  'open' in front of almost everything in order to
>  increase chances of public funding!
>
>  And I am in need of some help wrt the following
>  from Paola's ontolog webpage:
>
>  > With the term 'open ontology' we refer to a given set of agreed
>  > terms, both in terms of conceptualization and semantic formalization,
>  >  that has been developed based on public consultation, that embodies
>  > and represents and synthesizes all available, valid knowledge that is
>  >  deemed to pertain to a given domain,
>
>  given that there will guaranteedly be no such entities (what
>  kind of organisation is going to claim that it represents "*all*
>  available, valid knowledge"!), this would seem to be a way
>  of making 'open ontology' a legally protected label for an
>  empty set.... or at least one that is excluded for most domains that
>  are interesting enough to have a  body of knowledge
>  worth ontologising!
>
>  Several other of the requirements of open ontologies
>  on the page in question are also extremely problematic:
>  e.g.,
>
>  > • It should support queries via natural language as well as machine
>  > language, (T13)
>
>  how on Earth (or anywhere else) can it be a requirement of
>  an ontology that it supports queries involving anything, let alone
>  highly problematic and well beyond the state of the art
>  functionality in natural language processing.  (I think this
>  has been commented on in other contexts on Ontolog
>  already).
>
>  Several of the others have a similarly rough status.
>
>  So, given the page as such describes a state of affairs that
>  is in no way final or usable, but is a preliminary (and useful
>  I thought) bringing together of some points for discussion,
>  just *what* is being suggested as subject to infringed IPR
>  and is it worth it?
>
>  John B.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>    (014)



-- 
Paola Di Maio
School of IT
www.mfu.ac.th
*********************************************    (015)

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