discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

Edd Dumbill wrote:
> My aim has been to make the terms that the project needs, and then to
> use the RDF schema to relate them to existing terms.  I've been around
> the houses with this once before on RSS 1.0, and it ended up in a bit of
> a confusing mix.  This time I need the lowest possible barrier to
> adoption.  Those that care about the RDF-ness of it are happy using
> schemas.

Makes sense.

> I will be endeavouring as much as I can to make doap:license subproperty
> of cc:license.  I don't see any reason why I shouldn't add this to the
> DOAP schema.

That's what I'd want.

> As to where the appropriateness of DC reuse lies, while on the face of
> it this would seem to be in many places, unfortunately Dublin Core has
> some problems in the looseness of the definition of its terms (e.g.
> range of dc:creator), which cause confusion.  At least to me.

I've heard that explanation before, I'm being a jerk and grousing.  My 
preference would be for fuzziness over lack of interoperability.  I find 
it telling that this question from 
<http://rdfweb.org/topic/UsingDublinCoreCreator> goes unanswered:

----------
If we do this, we should be able to infer that 'N' is the dc:creator of 
 'D' wherever we see markup to the effect that 'D' has a foaf:maker of 
'M' and that 'M' has a foaf:name of 'N'.

  ?D dc:creator ?N .
  implied by
  ?D foaf:maker ?M .
  ?M foaf:name ?N

 (hmm, how to write this in proper machine-processable N3?)
----------

If RDF applications can't deal with unexpected compositions they may as 
well just skip RDF and use XML and hardcoded schemas.  Ok, maybe not -- 
I know there's a difference between the benefits of mixing vocabularies 
and the downside of using loosely-defined vocabularies.  As I said, I'm 
just grousing.

--
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#21