[Debwebid-discuss] rdf coordination

[Olivier Berger]

Hi.

Sorry for lagging. I'm trying to catch up with the discussion.

[edit: I started this email, and while I was typing, Chrys popped up, so
we had a long interesting chat on the topic. Nevertheless, I'll try and
keep the discussion going on the list so that Iain and others can
participate without too much backchannel activity.

I'm really glad to have met Chrys, as it seems we share quite many
views on the subject :-) Debconf is great ! ;-)]

chrysn <chrysn at fsfe.org> writes:

> Hi!
>
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 11:25:01PM +0100, Iain R. Learmonth wrote:
>> If the URIs are not dereferencable, they're useless as far as I'm concerned.
>
> That's what I mean by being nice participants of the semantic web, to be
> useful.
>
>> > http://packages.debian.org/src:arandr#project
>> 
>> Not dereferenceable and depends on packages.debian.org not polluting that
>> namespace which cannot be guaranteed at present.
>
> Not currently, but a negotiating redirect to whatever serves the actual
> metadata should be easy to implement.
>
> I've given the meta.debian.net some further thought; I do agree that it
> is easier to manage the namespace if it were under control of RDF
> afficionados.
>

Well, my initial approach of using the same FQDN and redirect for URIs
and the PTS pages was an attempt of integrating the RDF views as just
another of the interfaces of the Debian web services/sites, i.e. to try
and make it more mainstream in the Debian community (as well as being a
good SemWeb citizen, etc.). Of course, this makes the path harder as I
had to patch the PTS for doing so.

Keeping those RDF meta-data publications as a toy project of a few
(still more numerous that it used to be ;) of us may not be the best
way, IMHO. Still, we still have to convince others that there actually
is a use case, a differentiator in doing this.

This is the main barrier that we'd need to solve, beyond the pleasure to
achieve something that we percieve as "the right thing".

I'm still doubtful we have a strong case for convincing other DDs
(including DSA at some point, for instance) that this is really
useful. Have you thought about this crucial point ?

[Edit:]
Actually, both Chrys and me have come to a similar idea that one of the
most promising applications that could be taking advantage of Linked
[meta]Data about Debian could be what's related to bug tracking, in
particular stuff like bts-link [0], which monitors the Forwarded-To:
links in the Debian BTS. I actually wrote a piece on that subject
together with a few colleague, which may or not still be accurate years
after : Weaving a Semantic Web across OSS repositories: unleashing a new
potential for academia and practice [1]

I'd have many points to add to the thread, trying to summarize the
discussion of yesterday with Chrys, but I'm a bit too tired to remember
the other useful bits... but read on...
[/Edit:]

>
>> I am considering dropping ADMSSW and going with pure DOAP which may simplify
>> things, but this is still something that needs more thought (and I have
>> given it a lot so far).
>
> I don't have an opinion on that so far; ADMSSW seems to properly
> subclass/-property DOAP, and it might or might not add important
> distinctions.
>

About ADMS.SW, it has actually been revised as ADMS AP for Joinup
(i.e. Application Profile for Joinup) [2], which integrates interesting
bits (from DCAT), and fixes a few issues.

I told Chrys some bits of the history behind that specification, as well
as OSLC-CM for bug tracking, but it's a bit too long to tell here (maybe
on my blog some day soon ?)

I guess the specs written by PwC for the EC can look a bit frightening,
but they are nevertheless quite good provided that you can overcome the
formatting of the document ;-)


I hope these are useful bits, and looking forward to do more Debian
linked Data (if time/life etc. permits ;)

Best regards,


[0] https://www-public.tem-tsp.eu/~berger_o/weblog/tag/bts-link/
[1] http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/IJOSSP-2010-2/IJOSSP.html
[2] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/adms/asset_release/adms-application-profile-joinup
-- 
Olivier BERGER 
http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France)