General Formal Ontology (GFO)¶
Local reference identifier:
xwkont:ref:gfoSlug:gfoEditorial status:candidateCreated:2026-07-02Modified:2026-07-05
Descriptive Metadata¶
| Field | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Title | General Formal Ontology (GFO) | Top-level ontology for conceptual modeling; per the ontology's own dc:description. |
| Creator | Heinrich Herre (lead); Onto-Med research group, University of Leipzig | Multiple contributors across the ontology's history since 2006; do not treat as a complete author list. |
| Contributor | unknown | Full contributor list not verified in this pass. |
| Publisher | Onto-Med research group; hosted at github.com/Onto-Med/GFO and dereferenceable at https://w3id.org/gfo |
|
| Source type | ontology specification (OWL) | Modular: root gfo.owl imports modules/gfo-base.owl; a situation module also exists but was not consulted in this pass. |
| Version or edition | 2024-11-18 release (versionIRI https://w3id.org/gfo/release/2024-11-18); prior version 2024-07-05 |
Both root and base module carry this same version date. |
| Identifier or URL | https://w3id.org/gfo (root); https://github.com/Onto-Med/GFO (repository); DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5205419 (per the ontology's own bibo:doi annotation, not independently resolved in this pass) |
|
| Access date | 2026-07-02 | |
| Snapshot / Stable identifier | https://github.com/Onto-Med/GFO → http://web.archive.org/web/20250902115637/https://github.com/Onto-Med/GFO (2025-09-02), verified retrievable via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at time of writing, per ADR-0012. No snapshot found for the raw modules/gfo-base.owl file specifically (wayback/available returned no result for that exact URL) — the repository-level snapshot is the fallback, consistent with xwkont:ref:bfo-2020's precedent for GitHub-hosted OWL sources. |
|
| Rights/license | CC-BY-4.0 | Per the ontology's own terms:license annotation (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), not independently checked against a separate repository LICENSE file. |
| Archive mirror status | eligible — license permits redistribution, not yet mirrored | Per ADR-0016. CC-BY-4.0 is verified from the ontology's own metadata (see Rights/license), which is sufficient to make this record eligible; actual mirroring (hosting location, fetch, publish) is separate future work not yet started. |
Source Relation Notes¶
gfo.owl (the root ontology document, fetched from raw.githubusercontent.com/Onto-Med/GFO/main/gfo.owl) is a thin wrapper that owl:imports https://w3id.org/gfo/base; the substantive class definitions relevant to this crosswalk (Occurrent, Presential, Process) live in the imported base module, fetched separately from raw.githubusercontent.com/Onto-Med/GFO/main/modules/gfo-base.owl. Both were fetched directly as plain-text OWL/XML — no PDF extraction needed, consistent with the assessment that GFO has the most straightforward fetch path of any source ontology added by ADR-0015.
Rights and License Notes¶
CC-BY-4.0 per the ontology document's own metadata; not cross-checked against a separate repository LICENSE file in this pass.
Citation and Locator Notes¶
Recommended citation: General Formal Ontology (GFO), Onto-Med research group, version 2024-11-18, https://w3id.org/gfo (root), https://w3id.org/gfo/base (base module), DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5205419.
Direct primary-source verification (2026-07-02): gfo.owl and modules/gfo-base.owl were fetched directly from the Onto-Med/GFO GitHub repository (main branch — note this differs from xwkont:ref:bfo-2020's master branch; GFO's default branch is main) and read directly to verify continuant-occurrent.md's GFO correspondences. Used classes and their exact skos:definition text:
Occurrent(https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Occurrent): "Occurrents have temporal parts and thus cannot be present at a time-boundary. Time belongs to them, because they happen in time and the time of the occurrent is built into it. The relation between an occurrent and a chronoid is determined by the projection relation. Occurrents are also called generalized processes in the GFO."owl:disjointWithPresential.Presential(https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Presential): "A presential exists wholly at exactly one time boundary." Subclass ofConcreteandIndividual;owl:disjointWithOccurrent.Process(https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Process): "Processes are a special kind of occurrent. Processes are directly in time, they have characteristics which cannot be captured by a collection of time boundaries." Subclass ofOccurrent.
Note that GFO's own top-level pair is Presential/Occurrent, not "Continuant/Occurrent" — GFO does not use the term "continuant" anywhere in the base module. See continuant-occurrent.md's Uncertainty section for how this terminology gap is handled.
Reused for object.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Material_object (subclass of Discrete_presential) and Material_persistant — the latter's own definition text glosses this lineage as "those entities which are called sometimes continuants or objects, as apples, cars or houses." See object.md's Source Definitions and correspondence rows 006-007.
Reused for event.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Change (whose own definition text glosses one technical sense as "instantaneous event") and its subtype Instantaneous_change. GFO has no class literally named "Event"; Change/Instantaneous_change are the closest analogs found. See event.md's Source Definitions and correspondence rows 006-007.
Reused for process.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Process (subclass of Occurrent, owl:disjointWith Change and History) — "Processes are a special kind of occurrent. Processes are directly in time, they have characteristics which cannot be captured by a collection of time boundaries." The closest structural match to BFO's Process of any ADR-0015 source. See process.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 005.
Reused for information-artifact.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Symbol/Symbol_structure, considered and rejected as an Information-Artifact correspondence — they sit on GFO's Category (universal/type) side, disjoint from Individual, a formal-language-symbol concept rather than a content-bearing individual artifact. No correspondence recorded; GFO's separate situation module was not checked (see information-artifact.md's uncertainty-004). See information-artifact.md's Source Definitions.
Reused for quality.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Property (a Concrete, Dependent individual — trope-theoretic, joining BFO/DOLCE/UFO's camp rather than SUMO's abstracta), Property_value, and Value_space. Value_space's own definition text independently cites both Gärdenfors (2000) and DOLCE (Masolo, 2003) by name for the value-space/quality-space parallel — the first case in this repository of one source ontology's own primary text citing another already-covered source. See quality.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 005.
Reused for relation.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Relator (rdfs:subClassOf Individual, owl:disjointWith Property, no skos:definition of its own) and Relational_role (role_of some Relator). GFO independently uses the exact term "Relator" — the same word UFO's own relation theory uses for a dependent, existentially-linked mediating individual — the strongest terminological convergence found in this crosswalk. See relation.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 005.
Reused for role.md (2026-07-02): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Role (rdfs:subClassOf Concrete), Processual_role ("dependent processes... roles with a process as context"), Social_role (rdfs:subClassOf Independent, owl:disjointWith Dependent), and Relational_role (already covered for relation.md, reused here as the Role-specific correspondence). Social_role's Independent classification is the only case in the whole ADR-0015 buildout of a source treating a role subtype as bearer-independent, directly contradicting BFO/DOLCE-driven/UFO's shared dependent-particular assumption. See role.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 005.
Reused for time.md (2026-07-04): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Space_time (rdfs:subClassOf Individual) → Time (rdfs:subClassOf Space_time, owl:disjointWith Space) → Temporal_region (rdfs:subClassOf Time, owl:disjointWith Time_boundary) → Chronoid (rdfs:subClassOf Temporal_region, "entities sui generis... every chronoid has exactly two extremal and infinitely many inner time boundaries which are equivalently called time-points"), plus the sibling Time_boundary ("depend on a chronoids... and can coincide"). GFO's Time class carries a directly-quoted philosophical/formal lineage unique among all 8 sources checked for Time: "The time model of GFO is based on Brentano and the glass continuum of Allen&Hayes." Space_time is GFO's own third top-level branch (alongside Presential and Occurrent, all mutually owl:disjointWith) — Time is explicitly not classified as either continuant-like or occurrent-like. See time.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 005.
Reused for situation-state-of-affairs.md (2026-07-05, resolving that crosswalk's uncertainty-003): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies a class literally named Situation (https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Situation, rdfs:subClassOf Configuration) — missed by the earlier pass, which stopped at the parent Configuration class. Definition: "A situation is a special configuration which can be comprehended as a whole and satisfies certain conditions of unity, which are imposed by relations and categories associated with the situation. Herein, we consider situations to be the most complex kind of presentials." Also found: Configuroid (rdfs:subClassOf Process, not Presential — the occurrent-side counterpart to Configuration; "Configuroids are, in the simplest case, integrated wholes made up of material structure processes and property processes.") and Situoid (rdfs:subClassOf Configuroid; "Situoids are processes whose boundaries are situations and which satisfy certain principles of coherence, comprehensibility, and continuity... the most complex integrated wholes of the world... framed by a topoid."). GFO independently names its most-specific configuration-of-entities class Situation — the exact term this crosswalk targets — strengthening GFO's correspondence beyond the parent Configuration class alone. See situation-state-of-affairs.md's Source Definitions and correspondence rows.
Cross-module namespace note (2026-07-05, resolving TODO.md's open item on this module): gfo-situation.ttl also declares a parallel gfo-core: vocabulary (https://w3id.org/gfo/core/, distinct from this reference's own https://w3id.org/gfo/base/ namespace) with richer definitions for some already-cited terms — e.g. gfo-core:Relator has skos:definition "Relators are attributives that connect other entities (role players) by relational roles (played by role players).", while gfo-base:Relator (cited in relation.md) has no skos:definition at all. gfo-core:Object also carries skos:altLabel "Continuant", differing from gfo-base.owl's own Material_persistant/Material_object terminology. No separately fetchable gfo-core.owl/.ttl document exists in the Onto-Med/GFO repository — these terms are declared inline within gfo-situation.ttl itself. GFO's own root README.md explains the relationship: "[modules/gfo-base.owl] forms the core module of GFO... There may be parallel extensions for these domains, and not all extensions will be consistent with each other." Per that explicit disclaimer, gfo-core: is treated as a parallel, not-guaranteed-consistent research module — not a correction or supersession of gfo-base.owl, which remains this repository's correct primary GFO source for object.md, continuant-occurrent.md, relation.md, role.md, quality.md, and every other already-reviewed crosswalk. Not used to revise any reviewed content; noted here only as a citable secondary data point.
Reused for list-sequence.md (2026-07-07): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl also supplies Symbol_sequence (rdfs:subClassOf Symbol_structure, itself rdfs:subClassOf Category — GFO's type/universal side), considered and rejected as a correspondence for that crosswalk's ordered-collection candidate. Symbol_sequence denotes a sequence of symbols/signs, already claimed by symbol-sign-representation.md's GFO Symbol/Symbol_sequence/Symbol_structure correspondence, not a general ordered collection of arbitrary items. See list-sequence.md's Source Definitions.
Reused for continuous-discrete.md (2026-07-07): the same fetched modules/gfo-base.owl was re-checked directly (Claude's independent review pass) for Continuous, Discrete, and Discrete_presential. Confirmed exactly: Continuous (owl:intersectionOf Individual and owl:complementOf Discrete, rdfs:subClassOf Individual); Discrete (rdfs:subClassOf Individual, no skos:definition); Discrete_presential (rdfs:subClassOf both Discrete and Presential, a restriction instance_of some Persistant, owl:disjointWith Mass_entity). All three sit directly under Individual, confirming this candidate's cross-cutting framing. See continuous-discrete.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 001.
Reused for modality.md (2026-07-07): the same modules/gfo-base.owl was re-fetched and grepped directly for "modal," "necessity," "possibility," "necessary," "possible," "deontic," and "alethic." Found only necessary inside Material_persistant's own definition ("A material persistant P satisfies a number of necessary conditions...") and the object property necessary_for; both are relational/ordinary uses, not a modal branch. No dedicated modality class or operator exists in this module. See modality.md's Source Definitions.
Reused for non-physical-social-object.md (2026-07-07, session-048): the same modules/gfo-base.owl was re-fetched and grepped for "non_physical," "non-physical," "social_object," and "Category." Confirmed the draft's absence finding directly: Material_object/Material_persistant (material-object branch), Social_stratum/Social_role (social vocabulary via strata/roles, not a bearer-level social-object class), and no dedicated non-physical/social-object class anywhere in the module. Category/Concept are present but out of scope for this candidate (tagged to Universal/Type in candidate-concepts.md), not touched. See non-physical-social-object.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 005.
Reused for symbol-sign-representation.md (2026-07-07, session-049), this crosswalk's primary source, independent re-confirmation: the same modules/gfo-base.owl was re-fetched fresh and the Symbol/Symbol_sequence/Symbol_structure/Category class blocks re-read directly. Confirmed exactly: Symbol and Symbol_sequence are each rdfs:subClassOf Symbol_structure; Symbol_structure is rdfs:subClassOf Category, owl:disjointWith Concept and owl:disjointWith Universal, and carries no skos:definition of its own — the quoted "closely related to language" text belongs to Category's own definition ("Categories satisfy the following conditions: (1) Categories can be instantiated; (2) Categories can be predicated of other entities. Categories are defined intensional-with-an-s. They are, therefore, closely related to language."), inherited by Symbol_structure as its declared superclass. Per docs/methodology/crosswalk-runbook.md's reviewed-eligibility criterion, Symbol/Symbol_sequence/Symbol_structure are declared directly in this base module (not an extension), sufficient on its own for reviewed. See symbol-sign-representation.md's Source Definitions and correspondence row 001.