GMEOW Software Module

• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/software
• Tier: extension
• Group: extensions

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 106 terms and contributes 99 mapping or projection rows. Use it when its terms match the native fact you want to preserve; use the linkage tables to see how those facts leave GMEOW for consumer vocabularies.

Dependencies

• gmeow:slices/attestation
• gmeow:slices/creative-works
• gmeow:slices/entities
• gmeow:slices/events
• gmeow:slices/kernel
• gmeow:slices/language
• gmeow:slices/names
• gmeow:slices/provenance
• gmeow:slices/rights
• gmeow:slices/tags

Consumers

• The five-facet software model (five-facet software model): git-as-provenance, verifiable releases, this repo itself.

Local Map

Examples

Commit History

• Source: slices/extensions/software/examples/commit-history.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:Agent, gmeow:AuthorIdentity, gmeow:BuildActivity, gmeow:Commit, gmeow:Distribution, gmeow:Person, gmeow:Repository, gmeow:buildOutput, gmeow:buildSource, gmeow:canonicalizedIdentity

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: a commit DAG with identity canonicalization and build provenance
# Commits form a directed graph via gmeow:commitAncestor. Each commit's
# author is recorded as a gmeow:AuthorIdentity — the as-committed git identity
# (one of possibly many emails) — which gmeow:canonicalizedIdentity resolves to
# the real gmeow:Agent, so "same person, three git emails" is one agent without
# rewriting history. A gmeow:BuildActivity ties a source commit (gmeow:buildSource)
# to the gmeow:Distribution it produced (gmeow:buildOutput): verifiable provenance
# from source to artifact.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/software/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

ex:dana a gmeow:Person ; gmeow:name "Dana Reyes"@en .

ex:repo a gmeow:Repository ;
    rdfs:label           "myapp.git"@en ;
    gmeow:repositoryType gmeow:repoTypeGit .

# --- The author's git identity, canonicalized to the real agent.
ex:danaGitId a gmeow:AuthorIdentity ;
    gmeow:canonicalizedIdentity ex:dana .

# --- Two commits forming a DAG (commit2's ancestor is commit1). Each commit is
#     content-addressed by its git hash (gmeow:contentDigest).
ex:commit1 a gmeow:Commit ;
    gmeow:commitInRepository   ex:repo ;
    gmeow:commitAuthorIdentity ex:danaGitId ;
    gmeow:contentDigest        "git:9f4d2a1c8e7b6f5a0d3c2b1e9f8a7d6c5b4a3e2f" .

ex:commit2 a gmeow:Commit ;
    gmeow:commitInRepository   ex:repo ;
    gmeow:commitAuthorIdentity ex:danaGitId ;
    gmeow:commitAncestor       ex:commit1 ;
    gmeow:contentDigest        "git:1a2b3c4d5e6f7a8b9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d7e8f9a0b" .

# --- Build provenance: source commit → output distribution.
ex:build a gmeow:BuildActivity ;
    gmeow:buildSource ex:commit2 ;
    gmeow:buildOutput ex:dist .

ex:dist a gmeow:Distribution ; rdfs:label "myapp-1.0.0.tar.gz"@en .

Terms

Classes

Properties

Individuals

Linkages

• Rows: 99
• Projection profiles: codemeta, doap, foaf, mailmap, prov, schema-org, slsa, vcard
• External vocabularies: codemeta, dcmitype, doap, foaf, forgefed, https, prov, rdf, schema, spdx, swh, vcard, wd

Guide

Software — the five-facet de-conflation of the project domain

Slice: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/software · tier: extension Project ≠ Product ≠ Codebase ≠ Repository ≠ History — five identities, never one class.

DOAP's original sin was collapsing the endeavour, the product, the repo, and the history into one class. This slice corrects it: each facet is separately identified, separately classed, and never bridged by subclassing or equivalence. DOAP is aligned by reference as a lossy downcast, never imported (Principle 5). The slice is aggressively reuse-first: contribution comes from creative-works' Contribution relator (the flat gmeow:developer property is removed — Principle 6, greenfield: the inferior element does not survive its replacement), events and provenance from their own slices, attestation and signatures from the trust stack. The Principle-15 consumer is the five-facet software model (five-facet software model): git-as-provenance, verifiable releases — and this repository itself, which the slice describes when GMEOW dogfoods its own citation and release chain.

Facet 1 — the endeavour

gmeow:Project

A social object — purpose, participants, duration — independent of any product, repo, or codebase. An endurant, not a process: it persists and bears identity (RAiD-style gmeow:projectIdentifier) while being realised through events. Carries gmeow:maintenanceStatus and gmeow:governanceModel from open value vocabularies (Principle 9 — maintenance judgements are standpoint-scoped: one community's "abandoned" is another's "stable"). gmeow:SoftwareProject is the software SubKind, re-parented from Work to Project in the de-conflation.

Facet 2 — the product

gmeow:SoftwareProduct

The software as intellectual creation — design, functionality, behaviour — a specialization of gmeow:Work on the WEMI spine, independent of any repository or artifact. Distributed through gmeow:Package (the named, versioned ecosystem unit) and gmeow:Distribution (the concrete tarball/wheel/image, identified by content digest).

Facet 3 — the codebase

gmeow:SourceNode

The common kind for content-addressed source objects, aligned by reference to the git object model and the Software Heritage graph: gmeow:SourceTree (Merkle directory snapshot), gmeow:SourceFile, gmeow:SourceDirectory, gmeow:Blob (bytes only — the name lives in the gmeow:TreeEntry that points to it, exactly as in git). gmeow:materializationDepth on a repository bounds how much Merkle tree becomes triples — a projection boundary, not a deletion (Principle 10); deep traversal stays in native git or SWHID APIs.

Facet 4 — the location

gmeow:Repository

The hosting facet: history, branches, tags, refs. One gmeow:repositoryType (open VCS vocabulary: git, hg, svn, fossil, jj, pijul), hosted at one or more gmeow:ForgePlatforms (mirrors are non-functional), with cloneUrl/webUrl literals. Aligned by reference to Software Heritage Origin and ForgeFed.

Facet 5 — the history

gmeow:Commit

A content-addressed provenance event (gmeow:Activity). gmeow:parentCommit (a sub-property of wasDerivedFrom) is deliberately non-functional — merges have many parents, the root has none; gmeow:commitAncestor/commitDescendant give transitive DAG traversal and are kept non-simple, out of all cardinality axioms. Author and committer are held apart twice over: authoredBy vs committedBy (canonical agents) and authorTime vs committerTime (the four-clocks pattern).

gmeow:Release

An event that produces a versioned product — never the product itself. Functional gmeow:releaseOf ties it to its project; releaseVersion, releaseTag, and gmeow:releaseDoi (non-functional — multiple registrars coexist, Principle 9) identify it. Collaboration events (gmeow:Push, gmeow:Merge, gmeow:CodeReview) and artifacts (gmeow:Issue, gmeow:MergeRequest, gmeow:Review, gmeow:Diff) follow the same event-vs-information-object discipline: the Review document is not the CodeReview event that produced it.

gmeow:BuildActivity

The verifiable-release chain (verifiable-release chain): a build consumes gmeow:buildSource (commit or repository) and produces gmeow:buildOutput distributions, performed by a gmeow:Builder (a SoftwareAgent — GitHub Actions, Jenkins, a local make). Integrity claims ride on attestations via gmeow:hasSLSALevel (open SLSALevel vocabulary, levels 1–4); signatures and transparency-log entries are reused from the attestation/trust slices, never redeclared.

gmeow:AuthorIdentity

Immutable history vs current identity (immutable-history author identity): the raw git bytes (Name <email>, via gmeow:authorIdentityString) recorded by commitAuthorIdentity / commitCommitterIdentity, linked to the present self-asserted agent through gmeow:canonicalizedIdentity. Old and new identities are co-equal standpoints, never merged (Principle 9); superseded ones carry gmeow:displayable false (Principle 10). The .mailmap file is a generated projection from gmeow:mailmapEntry, not canonical source (Principle 4).

Solver layer & alignment

DAG analytics beyond the asserted transitive closure — merge-base computation, blame, diff derivation, Merkle re-hashing — belong to the solver layer (Principle 12); the graph records the objects and their digests. Alignments are all by reference (Principle 5): git object model, Software Heritage (Content/Directory/Revision/Origin), ForgeFed, SLSA, PROV-O, and the DOAP downcast. Depends on attestation, kernel, creative-works, entities, events, language, names, provenance, rights, and tags.

Project homepage and language (project homepage and language)

gmeow:projectHomepage · gmeow:programmingLanguage

gmeow:projectHomepage (functional) is the project's homepage → doap:homepage / schema:url. gmeow:programmingLanguage points at a first-class gmeow:Language (the language slice's ProgrammingLanguage), non-functional → doap:programming-language / schema:programmingLanguage.