ISSUE-175

Last Call Comment: SKOS namespace change question II

State:
CLOSED
Product:
SKOS
Raised by:
Sean Bechhofer
Opened on:
2008-10-06
Description:
Raised by Jeremy Carroll in [1]:

    *  The URI of the SKOS namespace. The current draft introduces a new
namespace for the SKOS vocabulary. Comments have been made that this may cause
difficulty for existing SKOS implementations or vocabularies. As a result, the
choice of SKOS namespace should be considered "at risk of change".

Any implementators using a namespace URI in a WD have been warned of possible
change before Rec.
Conventionally this means that the terms in the namespace or their meaning might
change, and the namespace URI remains unchanged. So if I had been part of the WG
when the namespace URI changed, I would have been opposed, however that's water
under the bridge and the argument cuts both ways! 
 

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swd-wg/2008Oct/0077.html
Related emails:
  1. ISSUE-175: Last Call Comment: SKOS namespace change question II (from dean+cgi@w3.org on 2008-10-06)
  2. Re: SKOS Comment (various) (from sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk on 2008-10-06)
  3. Status of LC comments (from sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk on 2008-10-06)
  4. RE: SKOS Comment (various) (from jeremy@topquadrant.com on 2008-10-07)
  5. meeting record: 2008-10-07 SWD WG (from swick@w3.org on 2008-10-07)
  6. Re: [ALL] Agenda - Nov 04 2008 SWD telecon - 1600 UTC (from alistair.miles@zoo.ox.ac.uk on 2008-11-04)
  7. Re: [ALL] Agenda - Nov 04 2008 SWD telecon - 1600 UTC (from aisaac@few.vu.nl on 2008-11-04)
  8. ISSUE-175 draft response (from sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk on 2008-12-02)
  9. [SKOS] Update on Last Call Comments (from alistair.miles@zoo.ox.ac.uk on 2008-12-02)
  10. Re: ISSUE-175 draft response (from alistair.miles@zoo.ox.ac.uk on 2008-12-02)
  11. Re: [SKOS] Update on Last Call Comments (from sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk on 2008-12-02)
  12. ISSUE-175 Last Call Comment: SKOS namespace change question II (from sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk on 2008-12-02)
  13. meeting record: 2008-12-02 SWD WG telecon (from aisaac@few.vu.nl on 2008-12-03)

Related notes:

2008-11-10: ACTION: Accept

2008-12-02: See also <a href="ISSUE-153</a>.">http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/153">ISSUE-153</a>.

2008-12-11: CHANGE-TYPE: Editorial

2008-12-11: RESOLUTION: This was an issue that has been debated at length in the WG (see for example [2,3]) and the WG have seen merit in both options. The Last Call Draft proposes a new namespace. Recent discussions [4] have seen the WG return to a position where the SKOS vocabulary would be defined using the existing namespace URI. We do not intend to change the property names of the key semantic relations skos:broader and skos:narrower, as it was felt that this would effectively negate any benefit from retaining the namespace. This will, however, result in a change to the semantics of these relationships. However, as highlighted in [5], in principle applications should be able to make use of the machine-readable published schema. There may be impact on previously published vocabularies, which users will need to be made aware of. Note also that "old" vocabulary (for example skos:subject) will no longer be defined in the skos namespace. Historical versions of the schema will, however still be made available (although not at the SKOS namespace URI). Our proposal is thus to revert to the original SKOS namespace URI, and to add an appendix to the reference document (see [6]) discussing the issues above.

2008-12-16: COMMENTER-RESPONSE: None