May 9, 2005
On the discussion of data
regularity à
On the Stephenson Cyber Attack
Taxonomy à
Discussion about ABC Ontology
as a DOF upper abstract ontology à
Hi Paul,
Thanks for contacting us. Your roadmap looks interesting! I've scanned through some of it and I agree with most of what you're saying.
I especially like your concise formulation of knowledge processing in terms of convolution!
So, yes, in general, collaboration sounds good. I guess my first reservation/question is about the overall direction you are proposing, based on your combination of these two statements:
A) We propose a broad program to establish the intellectual and technology foundation to a science of knowledge systems, and to integrate and deliver to the market place information science based on the proper use of what is called "machine encoded ontology"
B) "Our Phase 1 proposal is to integrate five stand-alone COTS[2] products [with 3 open source products]" ----
"B" sounds to me like something very complex, fancy, and expensive. It will have to be funded by deep pockets, more importantly it will have to be USED by someone with deep pockets and hard problems to solve.
These institutions exist, but making their needs the initial focus seems to me like a kind of top heavy trickle-down approach to establishing "the intellectual and technology foundation to a science of knowledge systems" mentioned in A.
I realize that the history of information science has often been shaped by large government grants and so forth, and don't get me wrong: having funding is a GOOD thing! But, rather than the 8 way integration you propose, I think that what the collective headspace most needs is more simple, semi-scalable, web like solutions that incorporate semantic technology.
When people can see OWL doing useful work in a small java system they can download, then they will be willing to take the next steps towards trying to understand semantic technology.
In the next few weeks we're planning to release an update to our "peruser" open-source technology platform targeted at just this space.
Peruser 2.0 integrates several java pieces into a minimal open source web knowledge platform driven by OWL, Prolog, and java-hosted scripting (Python, BeanShell, whatever).
If you might see room for integrating something like Peruser into your proposals, we can discuss that idea further. If you're committed to the big 8-way tool integration, I guess my next question is about what kind of financial arrangements you're considering for funding this effort, and what kind of collaboration you are looking for.
Thinking longer term, one of our strategic directions is in ontology based verification systems (following up on the work shown at xmltester.org). So, perhaps we could be the collaborating partner focusing on verification in one of your initiatives. If you think there is money available for this function, let us know.
Hope this is a useful perspective for you. Look forward to talking more soon. Again - lots of good stuff in the Roadmap, thanks!
Stu Austin, TX