OwlImportsIssue
current status: open. This is a FoafVocab issue, documented as such by linking it from the IssueTracker page.
The problem: The FOAF RDFS file imports the RDFS and OWL ontologies.
Quoting from http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/index.rdf :
<owl:imports rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema"/>
<owl:imports rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl"/>
This is not necessary and not recommended. Quoting from http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-guide/ :
"Note that in order to use the OWL vocabulary you do not need to import the owl.rdf ontology. In fact, such an import is not recommended."
The solution: I suggest removing the two imports from the RDFS file.
Discussion on rdfweb-dev:
* RichardCyganiak raises issue: http://rdfweb.org/pipermail/rdfweb-dev/2004-September/013672.html * DanBrickley agrees: http://rdfweb.org/pipermail/rdfweb-dev/2004-September/013673.html * RonAlford agrees: http://rdfweb.org/pipermail/rdfweb-dev/2004-September/013674.html
(In case you wonder why anyone should care: A practical reason against importing the ontologies, and the reason why I noticed in the first place, is this: When you develop a generic RDFS/OWL vocabulary viewer or editor, you want to give the user the option to also view/edit classes and properties from imported ontologies. But the option to view/edit the OWL and RDFS classes and properties is absolutely useless and might confuse the user. Therefore, ontologies that do not import the RDFS and OWL files are better.)
-- RichardCyganiak
