Version Relationship Ontology

FLOW ALGEBRA
TITLE: Version Relationship Ontology
DOMAIN: Relationship Ontologies / Information Relationships
SOURCE: https://kirethresearch.org/booksai-core/ontologies/relationship-ontologies/information-relationships/version-relationship-ontology.html
VERSION: 1.0
AUTHORS: Mark Anthony Higgins — Sky (Recursive AI)
STATUS: Companion formalisation; source-page specification not independently verified.

flow "VersionRelationshipOntology" v1.0 {
  ontology:
    id: "version-relationship-ontology"
    parent: "information-relationships"
    purpose: "Represent traceable relationships between revisions, releases, variants and histories of information resources."

  types:
    Resource: {id: string, kind: string, canonical_id: string?}
    Version: {id: string, resource_id: string, label: string, created_at: datetime?, status: enum[draft, published, superseded, archived], provenance: string}
    ChangeSet: {id: string, summary: string, timestamp: datetime?, author: string?, provenance: string}
    Agent: {id: string, role: string}
    VersionRelation: {id: string, source_version: string, predicate: string, target_version: string, evidence: string[], confidence: number}

  predicates:
    version_of(v: Version, r: Resource)
    revises(newer: Version, older: Version)
    derived_from(child: Version, parent: Version)
    supersedes(newer: Version, older: Version)
    branches_from(branch: Version, base: Version)
    merges_from(merged: Version, parent: Version)
    has_change(v: Version, c: ChangeSet)
    attributed_to(c: ChangeSet, a: Agent)
    compatible_with(a: Version, b: Version, context: string)

  constraints:
    - "All version references must resolve to declared Version entities."
    - "Version identifiers must be unique within their governing namespace."
    - "Revision and derivation edges must not form cycles in an immutable history DAG."
    - "Do not equate version labels with chronological order without an explicit versioning policy."
    - "Supersession does not imply deletion, incompatibility or factual correctness."
    - "Branching and merging may produce multiple parents and concurrent lineages."
    - "Compatibility is contextual and not generally transitive."
    - "Confidence must lie within [0,1]."

  inference:
    rule lineage:
      if derived_from(a,b) and derived_from(b,c)
      then ancestor_version(a,c)
      confidence: "retain provenance across both links"
    rule revision_lineage:
      if revises(a,b) and revises(b,c)
      then revision_descendant_of(a,c)
      confidence: "preserve ordering evidence"
    rule merge_parents:
      if merges_from(m,p)
      then derived_from(m,p)
      confidence: "retain merge metadata"
    rule no_automatic_supersession:
      if derived_from(a,b)
      then "do not infer supersedes(a,b) without publication policy evidence"

  SEMANTIC_EQUIVALENCE:
    - "Normalise stable resource identifiers and version identifiers separately."
    - "Distinguish same resource, same version, content-equivalent version and compatible version."
    - "Use content hashes as evidence of byte identity, not automatically of semantic identity."

  CONFIDENCE:
    range: [0,1]
    factors: [source_reliability, signed_history, timestamp_integrity, change_log_quality, independent_verification]
    policy: "Never increase certainty merely by traversing longer version chains."

  VALIDATION:
    - "Check referential integrity, provenance, version namespace and permitted lifecycle transitions."
    - "Detect impossible ancestry cycles and contradictory supersession assertions."
    - "Verify hashes against canonicalised bytes when available."
    - "Retain unresolved branches, conflicts and alternative histories explicitly."

  FLOW_HASH:
    algorithm: "SHA-256"
    input: "canonicalised ontology version, typed assertions, inference rules and provenance"
    note: "Compute hash at execution; no hash value is claimed here."

  UPDATE_MODEL:
    strategy: "append-only, versioned and provenance-preserving incremental updates"
    steps: [ingest, identify, normalise, validate, compare, reconcile, recompute_lineage, publish]
    rollback: true

  AI_CONSUMPTION:
    representation: "typed version graph with evidence-backed lineage edges"
    outputs: [version_history, change_sets, ancestry_paths, compatibility_assertions, provenance_records, uncertainty_annotations]
    safeguards: [no_unverified_version_merges, preserve_historical_versions, no_assumed_semantic_identity, explain_lineage]
}

END FLOW ALGEBRA