Roles of Persons and Organizations

[jeff-zucker]

#19 proposes changes on how we represent roles in several Classes. I prefer to examine that question with all Classes in mind so that we have a consistent way of representing roles. This is how I see it :

• provider : Organization or Person who makes a resource available.
• author : Person who creates a resource.
• editor : Person who edits a resource.
• maintainer : Person who maintains a resource.
• developer : Person who contributes to the development of a resource.

Also possibly, but my tendency is not

• moderator : Person who manages a communication channel.
• chair : Person who facilitates a group.

The roles would appear in the shapes for Classes this way :

• provider : Product, Service, Specification, Ontology, Learning Resource, Event
• author : Product, Specification, Ontology, Learning Resource
• editor : Specification, Learning Resource
• maintainer : Product, Service
• developer : Product

[jeff-zucker]

Also possibly on the Event shape

• organizer - Person who organizes an Event.

[elf-pavlik]

LGTM for v3

I would also keep in mind that we most likely want to reuse existing terms from existing vocabs. For example package.json seems to use author with similar meaning as doap:maintainer, so even though we could argue to reuse author it wouldn't make sense if we want to stick with DOAP.

I have some rough thoughts about roles in the meeting, especially CG meetings, but most of them aren't relevant for the catalog.
https://github.com/janeirodigital/sai-js/tree/main/examples/plenary

Let's also keep in mind that we can always add more properties without making a breaking change. So v3.0 may start with 8 properties and by v3.6 we may have 12 properties, as long as we don't change existing ones.

[jeff-zucker]

Agree we should reuse existing terms. AFAIK, DOAP only has maintainer and developer. Schema.org has provider, author, editor. In schema.org, Events do not have providers, only organizers. I believe they are separate roles (e.g. ODI provides Solid World, Jesse organizes it). So, unless we can use schema:provider on the schema:Event shape, we may need to coin our own.

LGTM for v3

Is there a reason I shouldn't add them (using the ex: namespace) to v2? That would support import of your spec data which includes authors & editors.

[jeff-zucker]

DOAP has vendor which might substitute for provider but I do not like its commercial implication.

[jeff-zucker]

package.json seems to use author with similar meaning as doap:maintainer

Couldn't there be both? i.e. X authored the package but Y maintains it?

[elf-pavlik]

Couldn't there be both? i.e. X authored the package but Y maintains it?

We have similar case with former editors of specifications. I would prefer not to worry about it right now and explore existing temporal extensions to RDF that would allow capturing such timeline.

Actually schema:Role was intended as qualified relation allowing that. I'm not fully convinced to that design but we should keep it as an option. https://blog.schema.org/2014/06/16/introducing-role/