SUO: Vote on SUMO
Jim,
I vote NO.
In my opinion, the proposed SUMO is NOT a good starting point for the
SUO effort. Indeed, I am afraid it is just the wrong starting point.
As I have extensively discussed with Adam and others at the latest
IJCAI SUO workshop, the "fast prototyping" strategy that has been
adopted for the SUMO is not suitable for a serious ontology standard
development. A more cautious strategy based on in-depth analysis,
comparison and evaluation of existing proposals and open ontological
issues seems much more appropriate to me.
Moreover, as claimed by many people in this list already, I believe
we should aim at a more modular approach for the SUO, something like
a library of foundational ontologies, well-documented and suitably
related one each other. A very important requirement for (at least
some of) these foundational ontologies would be the link to natural
language, which has been a little bit lacking in the SUMO effort
(despite the recent attempt to map it to WordNet).
Despite this negative vote, I confirm however my personal interest in
the SUO effort, and my availability to jump in and moderate the
discussion related to mereological issues, as requested by Adam and
promised by me at the IJCAI workshop.
Greetings,
-- Nicola
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Nicola Guarino
National Research Council phone: +39 O49 8295751
LADSEB-CNR fax: +39 O49 8295763
Corso Stati Uniti, 4 email: Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
I-35127 Padova
Italy
http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html
(***updated 7/6/2001 ***)