RE: A bit of bomb throwing....

From: Prokopp, Christian <christian.prokopp_at_sap.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 06:08:17 +0800

Thank you for making my point with the logs.

"The burden of proving this is still upon the research communities
shoulders."
I beg to differ - it is not the researcher's responsibility to prove
anything or enforce anything - he/she researches.

"Realistically, If you can't convince the tinkering community who can
you convince?"
See above.

Cheers,
Christian


-----Original Message-----
From: Zack Rosen [mailto:zack_at_civicspacelabs.org]
Sent: Thursday, 19 January 2006 5:12 AM
To: general_at_simile.mit.edu
Subject: Re: A bit of bomb throwing....

> This would be one of the overlaps (they might still work for funds,
> papers, PhD (e.g. David) - I don't know all their details). Why don't
> you ask: 'Drupal's and Wordpress's mission overlaps with SIMILE - why
> don't they pursue collaboration?' ;-)

(Actual AIM log)
Me: Do you think Drupal should pursue implementing semantic web
technology such as an RDF object store?
Drupal Developer 1: well, I have no immediate need.
Drupal Developer 1: are other people asking for it?
Me: no
Drupal Developer 1: lol
Drupal Developer 1: its not a bad idea, but I don't know how much
people will use it or need it

#drupal irc.freenode.org
[10:53am] zacker: Do you think Drupal should pursue implementing
semantic web technology such as an RDF object store?
[10:53am] Morbus: yes.
[10:53am] Morbus: and, in fact, someone is working on that.
[10:53am] zacker: who is?
[10:53am] grinder joined the chat room.
[10:53am] Morbus: http://drupal.org/node/37556
[10:54am] ankur joined the chat room.
[10:54am] termie left the chat room. ("This computer has gone to sleep")
[10:54am] Morbus: though, it's less about "storing drupal objects as
rdf" and more about "storing rdf triples to compliment drupal objects"
[10:55am] zacker: how so?
[10:56am] chx: RDF <shudder> another bloated XML thing right?
[10:56am] Morbus: no.
[10:56am] Morbus: RDF is not XML.
[10:56am] Morbus: It can be serialized as XML.
[10:56am] Morbus: Which, yes, I agree, is the devil.
[10:56am] Morbus: But RDF is best serialized, IMO, as N3.
[10:56am] Morbus: <g>
[10:57am] Morbus: zacker: see, for example, the bottom of http://
coders.co.nz/drupal_development/?q=node/add/story
[10:57am] zacker: thanks
[10:58am] xjjk: Morbus: you need a new theme
[10:59am] nemo_work: RDF is non-hierarchical
[10:59am] nemo_work: so rendering it as XML would be a little silly
[10:59am] nemo_work: although of course possible
[11:00am] Morbus: chx: http://www.disobey.com/detergent/2002/sw123/
[11:00am] Morbus: for a very soft, and quite outta date (2002) intro
to RDF and the Semantic Web, by yours truly.
[11:00am] nemo_work: http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/#section-
Serialising
[11:00am] nemo_work: Morbus: btw, I'm given to understand that Gecko
is moving away from localstore.rdf to an internal db?
[11:01am] Morbus: I've no idea.
[11:01am] nemo_work: just wondering, 'cause that's one of the few
uses of RDF out there.
[11:01am] Morbus: well, FOAF and RSS 1.0 are a big one.
[11:01am] Morbus: though, Wordpress wants to remove RSS 1.0 support now.
[11:02am] Morbus: because, for some odd reason, they believe it's too
old.
[11:02am] nemo_work: doing feeds as RDF doesn't seem to make much
sense. I've always thought, why not stick with XML for data that
will always be hierarchical?
[11:03am] Morbus: well, RSS, from day one, was originally RDF in the
first place.
[11:03am] Morbus: until Winer came along and screwed it up.
[11:03am] nemo_work: I do bemoan the fact that the pervasiveness of
XML has made hierarchies almost instinctive.
[11:03am] Morbus: and, honestly, i don't see RSS as hierarchal.
[11:03am] nemo_work: that and java
[11:03am] nemo_work: Morbus: well, it grew out of web logs
[11:03am] Morbus: it's just items. there's no hierarchy to items.
[11:04am] nemo_work: a list of items, each with attributes, yeah.
even less than a hierarchy
[11:04am] Morbus: actually, no, it grew out of my.netscape.com.
[11:04am] Morbus: not web logs.
[11:04am] nemo_work: definitely no need for graphing though
[11:04am] Morbus: if anything grew out of weblogs, it was winer's
original scriptingNews format.

The Drupal community is open to the concepts but skeptical of the
value of semantic web technology.

> and then we are back where Stefano
> (I think) started - join/collaborate or do something else.
> Personally I
> wonder if the interest is *that* great (yet) from any side because you
> seem to be the only one really eager about this collaboration or else
> people would be all over each others mail lists and already implement
> with each other. There is no one stopping or preventing it but it
> seems
> the interest is not big enough yet for people to spend their resources
> on this. Sure it is a bit the chicken-egg problem but that is no one's
> fault.
> I for my part found something interesting in SIMILE and will work with
> it and contribute to it wherever my interests cross theirs and it
> seems
> there are an increasing amount of people doing that which comes
> back to
> your desire for an active open source community - it takes time but I
> think this project is on its way there.

The Drupal community is open to collaboration but they are skeptical
of the value and use afforded by RDF / semantic web technologies.
The burden of proving this is still upon the research communities
shoulders. I don't think this is an impossible chasm for this
community to cross.

Realistically, If you can't convince the tinkering community who can
you convince?

-Zack
Received on Wed Jan 18 2006 - 22:07:58 EST

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