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HyperAgents / hmas

An ontology to describe Hypermedia Multi-Agent Systems, interactions, and organizations.
https://purl.org/hmas/
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Would there be any reason not to make `:Workspace` and `:Platform` sub-classes of `:Artifact` ? #32

Closed maximelefrancois86 closed 2 years ago

maximelefrancois86 commented 2 years ago

Workspace and Artifact are currently disjoint classes in the core ontology.

Cartago host Workspaces, that contain at least a WorkspaceArtifact. So Workspaces and Artifacts are (maybe artificially) disjoint. See https://github.com/jacamo-lang/jacamo/blob/master/doc/faq-agent-in-mas.adoc#what-are-the-default-artifacts-at-the-disposal-of-agents

However this seems incompatible with the intuitions of some members of the project.

In https://github.com/HyperAgents/ns.hyperagents.org/issues/13#issuecomment-1029349488 @danaivach wrote:

This will also cover the cases where a hmas:Platform or a hmas:Workspace are described by a profile with one or more hmas:Signifier, although they are not (at least right now) types of hmas:Artifact.

In https://github.com/HyperAgents/ns.hyperagents.org/issues/13#issuecomment-1029828690 @andreiciortea wrote:

only environmental resources can provide affordances (e.g., abstract concepts cannot), so :Platform is then necessarily an :Artifact; this is not yet modeled

I see some benefit in making :Workspace and :Platform sub-classes of :Artifact, for example affordances could be simply provided by artifacts (incl. workspaces and platforms)

DrLeturc commented 2 years ago

Conceptually, seing :Platform as a subclass of :Artifact does not shock me. For instance, we can easily imagine a motivating scenario where there are several :SubMASPlatforms that an agent can use as different kinds of artifact. Example : an agent hosted by a :MetaPlatform that groups several :ServicePlatforms as e.g. the well known :MASPlateformTerritoire (developped at EMSE). He could use it as an :Artefact from its current HomeWorkspace. Furthermore, there is another advantage of grouping :Workspace and :Platform as the same subClass. However seing a :Workspace as an :Artifact, I find it a bit strange at a first glance.

I cannot find a motivating scenario that could explain that a :Workspace is also an :Artifact that can be used by agents. However since a :Workspace is here defined as a logical container, maybe we could imagine some situations where an agent needs to use such logical container as an Artifact.. For example : putting agents into different :BoxWorkspaces. I don't know.

oboissier commented 2 years ago

From a practical point of view, if one wants to offer the possibility for agents to deploy their own environment in terms of workspaces, platforms, a workspace and a platform should be considered as artifacts, since, according to the definition artifacts are tools for agents.

DrLeturc commented 2 years ago

Okay from the point of view of Olivier, it seems clear that we can see :MASPlatform and :Workspace as :Artifact. I share this point of view.

So I close this issue if everyone agrees with what has been proposed. I did the modification on the core ontology vocab.

maximelefrancois86 commented 2 years ago

see https://github.com/HyperAgents/ns.hyperagents.org/commit/a9eb4dfe84ff8d8a518847d51b1a6d7374d0301c