Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing

Establishes an ontological commitment as an agreement to use a shared vocabulary coherently, and minimal commitment as the discipline of stating the weakest theory that still does the work.

Read Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing · retrieved 2026-09-22

What it informs — 8

• enforcedA commitment says whether the build proves it
• enforcedAn exemplar shows the shape a record takes
• enforcedKnowledge enters as a term or an assertion, never as a new field
• enforcedThe ground has one schema, and it is data
• enforcedThe prose says what the registry says
• enforcedGovernance and execution share one substrate
• enforcedA text answers one question, in the reader's words
• enforcedProse names only what the registry holds

This source is what the model was built from. It does not itself commit the model to anything — a commitment does, and the ones it informs are named above.