And we went from there.
And between us, we developed a language called OIL,
which was based on a description logic which was already around at the time.
We met people in the U.S. like Jim Hendler, and the DAML program,
people working on the DAML program. We all decided that, hey, we're more or
less trying to do the same thing, why don't we pool our resources, which we did.
Came up with DAML+OIL, wasn't really much different from the OIL thing.
And then the idea was to go for, to try to develop this into a standard
so more people would really be able to use it.
And this was where OWL originally came in, and
then the OWL working group started and we went through the process.
What we thought would be the easy process of standardizing DAML+OIL,
as a Web ontology language.
So then of course, a whole new bunch of people joined the party,
which were the sort of Web people.
And of course, they had a whole load of concerns of their own.
Things that were important to them.
Which were things like, integration compatibility with RDF
and generally with Web infrastructure and existing standards.
So actually the process then of changing DAML+OIL, evolving DAML+OIL into OWL,
it took longer than we thought, involved a bigger change than we thought,
and I think it took a couple of years in the end.
And much more than that off my life, [LAUGH] ten years off my life, I think.
And but, I mean,
it was pretty interesting, and I learned a lot there, as well.
And the language evolved not a great deal,
but the few, it was mainly the syntax and the relationship with RDF that changed.
The underlying logic didn't change very much.
And of course the semantics didn't change.
Because that just flows from the logic.
The huge impact of OWL was just the fact that being these kind of
KR languages around for donkey's years, as you know.
And but there'd been, you know, every university
research group had typically created their own variant,
their own little flavor, all somewhat incompatible.