LOF-P-006: Versioning

Draft for ratification

Part of the founding draft of the LOF principles.

Summary

Each release carries a version IRI and version number, and every earlier release remains resolvable.

Purpose

Legal analysis is often retrospective. Users must be able to retrieve exactly the version of an ontology that was in force when data was annotated.

Recommendations and requirements

1. Each release declares owl:versionIRI of the form https://w3id.org/lof/{id}/releases/{version}/{id}.owl and owl:versionInfo.
2. Version numbers follow semantic versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH). A MAJOR increment signals a change that can alter inferences over existing data.
3. Each release is tagged v{version} in the repository, and the change is recorded in CHANGELOG.md.

Implementation

make release VERSION=x.y.z sets both annotations. Then tag and push.

Examples

https://w3id.org/lof/odp-001/releases/0.1.0/odp-001.owl

Criteria for review

The version IRI resolves to the tagged file, and the changelog describes the release.

Automated check: Version IRI resolution is tested during review.

Feedback and discussion

Propose changes to this principle by pull request against docs/principles/lof-p-006-versioning.md, or open a thread in Discussions.

Discussion