[doap-interest] Project relationships and funding

[Stuart Yeates]

Simal[0] is an embryonic project catalog application. We're using  RDF/DOAP but we'd like to extend it in two directions. The first is project dependency and the second is project funding. We like input / debate. Ideally these would be in the main DOAP namesape.

<rdf:Property rdf:about="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#DependsOn">
        <rdfs:isDefinedBy rdf:resource="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#" />

        <rdfs:label xml:lang="en">Depends on</rdfs:label>
        <rdfs:label xml:lang="fr">?</rdfs:label>
        <rdfs:label xml:lang="es">?</rdfs:label>
        <rdfs:comment xml:lang="en">A project which this project depends upon. Thus the Linux Kernel depends on GCC, because the Kernel only compiles correctly (and is tested against) GCC and  the various apache HTTPD modules depend on the HTTPD itself because they are useless in practice without it. </rdfs:comment>
        <rdfs:comment xml:lang="fr">?</rdfs:comment>
        <rdfs:comment xml:lang="es">?</rdfs:comment>

        <rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#TransitiveProperty" />
        <rdfs:domain rdf:resource="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#Project" />
        <rdfs:range rdf:resource="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#Project" />
</rdf:Property> 

DependsOn is defined in terms of projects. I recognize that it could also be usefully defined in terms of doap:Project OR asfext:Standard, but we're interested in projects. I'm also not sure whether #TransitiveProperty can be used in such situations.

We're explicitly not looking to implement a build system (ant, make. etc). Build systems are about relationships between code. DependsOn is about relationships between projects.

The second thing we want to represent is less well-defined, funding. We're modeling the funding of development projects by the JISC[1], but there are lots of organisations that fund (more or less directly) projects, everything from fee-paying members of the eclipse foundation[2] to profits from the UKFSN[3]. I had though of a representation such as:

<foaf:Organization> 
   <funds url="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_elearning_capital/el_xinstit/webpa.aspx" funderId="a1b2c3d4">
     <doap:Project rdf:resource="http://webpa.lboro.ac.uk/"> 
   </funds> 
</foaf:Organization>

<funds> is an instance of funding by the Organisation of the Project, url points to a page about the relationship and the funderId is the funders reference for this.

I'm aware that other people have created RDF vocabularies for financial relationships. In particular PurchaseOrder[4]. It seems possible to hack up something in using PurchaseOrder, but it seems like an ugly, ugly hack to me. Something like:

<po:PurchaseOrder>
   <po:billTo>
     <foaf:Organization /> <!-- funding org --> 
   </po:billTo>
   <po:Supplier>
      <foaf:Organization /> <!-- funded org --> 
   </po:Supplier>   
   <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_elearning_capital/el_xinstit/webpa.aspx"/>
   <po:PurchasedItem>
       <!-- ? --> 
   </po:PurchasedItem>
</po:PurchaseOrder>

Thoughts?

cheers
stuart

[0] http://code.google.com/p/simal/
[1] http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
[2] http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/
[3] http://www.ukfsn.org/profits.html
[4] http://www.dayf.de/2004/owl/order.owl
[5] http://groups.google.com/group/simal-contributors/browse_thread/thread/e53a22a5fffef17e/4c386a4b682200a0