Question - History of ivoa onto of astronomical object types

[Markus Demleitner]

Hi Robert,

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 05:16:54PM +0000, Robert Rovetto wrote:
> Although some tech documentation pages and list archive are on the
> site, I'm interested in understanding more about the history of the
> IVOA ontology.  

Well, there is no IVOA ontology, just several vocabularies.  The ones
we currently define are on http://www.ivoa.net/rdf/.  Some of these,
indeed, have a rather twisted provenance; refframe, for instance,
takes up bits that once lived in two different XML schemas, which in
turn drew on quite a bit of prior art.  The history of an astronomy
thesaurus (the latest incarnation of which, the UAT, is still in the
process of adoption by the IVOA) could fill volumes.  And then there
are the UCDs, which have a rich history of their own.

> Would anyone--e.g., original ivoa developers--be able to share? 
> If willing, a presentation in a meeting would be wonderful.

Most of what you see today went through many hands, and hence it is
not easy to even name the "original ivoa developers" in many cases,
and quite a few of the original protagonists have already retired.  

And so there is not just one history, but quite a number of stories.
It might be methodically enlightening to try and tell one or two of
those, but to pick which one to tell, it would help to have a few
questions that such stories could be intended to answer.

Could you try and come up with some of these questions?

        -- Markus