Peter Patel-Schneider Message

========included message begins here=====
[The following can be freely distributed and attributed to me.]
 
        A personal opinion on the charter for the ``interest group''
 
My belief is that the ``interest group'' (for that is what the W3C calls
these things) should be as much like a W3C interest group as possible.
This has a number of important ramifications in my view:
 
1/ The group should be inclusive, at least as inclusive as a W3C interest
   group.  This means, to me, that people who are active in the area AND
   are willing to put in significant effort to the workings of the group
   should not be excluded from the group.
2/ The group should not be tied to one particular outside group or
   community.
3/ The group should have a well specified charter, which is also not tied to
   one particular outside group.
 
Now the group is not a W3C interest group, so there may not be a need to be
as formal about the charter for the group, but there should be one, and it
should be produced immediately.  I think that December is much too late for
an initial version of the charter (see below).
 
Because the group should not be tied to any particular outside group, its
charter should not include any oversight by any outside group nor should
its charter include any requirements to produce anything for any outside
group nor should the group be required to start from any particular
starting point.
 
In my view there are two potential charters for the group.  The more
grandiose charter could start something like:
 
  The charter of this interest group is to investigate and produce
  languages for representing semantic content in the WWW.  It is recognized
  that this is an extremely large area and it is expected that the group
  will not produce a single language for this purpose.  The first activity
  of the group will be to investigate which subareas of the general area 
  can be addressed with current mechanisms and to propose which of these
  subareas will be further investigated.
 
Given the interests and background of the setting up of the group, it is
expected that one of the first subareas to be addressed will be languages
for representing ontologies on the web.
 
The more targeted charter could start something like:
 
  The charter of this interest group is to investigate and produce
  languages for representing ontologies in the WWW.  The first activity of 
  the group will be to produce a general philosophy to guide future work of 
  the group.
 
This targeted charter has some advantages in my view, and is the one I
would prefer.
 
==============included message ends here=====