RE: SUO: RE: Ballot may be released Friday (a plea for clarification)
John;
Could you please replace point number two of your motion with some brief
text that describes the virtues you want included from ISO/IEC IS
11179-3. I spent some less than fruitful time trying to research my
ontological concerns in the context of that standard.
I think that we would all be in your debt if you could.
Thanks!
-Eric
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 3:29 PM
> To: Eric Peterson
> Cc: jim.s3@juno.com; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: Re: SUO: RE: Ballot may be released Friday (a plea for
> clarification)
>
> Pierre, Matthew, Eric, et al.,
>
> Officially speaking, the only vote that means anything
> is the final vote to approve some document as the Final
> Committee Draft, which will then be circulated to the
> entire world. If nobody objects to that final draft,
> then it will be blessed as an official IEEE Standard.
>
> But as Matthew observed, a lot of politics, compromises,
> consensus building, and just plain work will be necessary
> before a good, if not perfect Committee Draft is written.
>
> Technically speaking, Pierre is correct in observing that
> these votes will have no binding effect on what anyone
> actually does. But the group does need a statement of
> goals to focus attention on a recommended direction.
>
> As I and some other people believe, the joint motion
> subsumes Adam's motion and makes it redundant. But
> in the spirit of compromise, I agreed to vote for
> Adam's motion if he will vote for mine. I have no
> objection to redundant voting if it will help to
> promote consensus.
>
> Eric advocated a third ontology. That is possible:
>
> > But I would certainly support resolution #2 with an additional point
> > stating that the goal of the effort would be to create a third
content
> > ontology (which could be composed of multiple theories which would
be
> > tied together in IFF fashion) which would be a merge of OpenCyc and
> > SUMO. That third ontology would also be the SUO.
>
> To clarify the point, I am including another copy of the
> suohier2.gif diagram, which shows how the modules derived
> from SUMO and OpenCyc could fit together. That diagram
> can also be found on my web site:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/figs/suohier2.gif
>
> The yellow box in the middle, which has the label
> "Customized", might be considered as a "third ontology".
>
> In my earlier note, I said that this ontology was
> a "special purpose" ontology. But it is possible that
> some such combination might turn out to be superior to
> either SUMO or OpenCyc. If so, the SUO committee could
> vote to give it a privileged status over any of the others.
>
> However, I am afraid that such a proposal at this time
> might raise more acrimony and contention than consensus.
> I believe that our time would be more productively spent
> in starting the actual work on both SUMO and OpenCyc,
> while using and refining the IFF methodology to see how
> and whether they can be related, merged, and/or combined.
>
> If during the course of that work, some third ontology,
> such as the one in yellow in suohier2.gif should prove
> to be more attractive than anything else we have ever
> seen, then we can have another vote to make it the
> primary product of the SUO effort.
>
> Bottom line: I suggest that we leave the motion as it
> stands, and see how things progress. If some great new
> ontology emerges, we can take another vote later.
>
> John Sowa