Re: SUO: Draft Motion on OpenCyc
Jim
The draft of the motion should take into
account the recent discussions, which
have been creeping toward a consensus.
Folloiwing are the major issues:
1. The CycL language is not being proposed
as a standard, although the current
content of OpenCyc is stated in CycL.
One possibility is to adopt the CL
(Common Logic) draft, which is being
proposed as an ISO standard.
2. Cyc and OpenCyc are already organized
in microtheories, which are compatible
with the IFF framework, which is designed
to support multiplicities of theories.
That relationship should be acknowledged
by the draft resolution.
3. Other ontology projects, such as SUMO,
in which many members of this committee
have invested quite a lot of effort,
should be encouraged to contribute their
work to the collection of microtheories
developed by this project.
To accommodate Point #1, the simplest approach
is to omit any mention of CycL in the wording
of the motion. To accommodate Point #2, the
motion should mention theories (or microtheories)
and stress the relationship to IFF. To accommodate
Point #3, the motion should emphasize that the
project should be able to accept, accommodate,
and include theories (or microtheories) from
other sources.
Following is a suggested revision of the draft
ballot question along those lines:
Should the IEEE P1600.1 Standard Upper Ontology
Working Group commence work on a project to develop
a library of theories or microtheories, which
(1) are compatible with the IFF framework,
(2) are derived from the microtheories of the
OpenCyc ontology, and
(3) include theories or microtheories derived from
other ontologies, such as SUMO and any others
that may be put in a form that is compatible
with the IFF framework.
The base documents for this projet include, but are
not limited to the following:
(1) The OpenCyc ontology as initially set forth in the
following (two-part) starter document:
a) http://www.cyc.com/SUO/opencyc-ontology.txt
b) http://www.cyc.com/SUO/minimal-cyc-kb.txt
(2) The IFF framework as set forth in...
(3) The SUMO ontology as set forth in...
I suggest that the IFF and SUMO developers fill in
the dots with references to their best available texts.
John Sowa