'Eskimo Snow and Scottish Rain'

A W3C Note from the lawyers This W3C Note discusses the many different ways different organizations can read the same set of terms - and how those terms can have meanings which vary from organization to organization.
Semantics matter Exchanging information for business purposes (or any purposes) requires some level of trust. Lawyers and others have spent centuries hammering out common understandings of business and legal vocabularies, and schemas promise (and threaten) to bring that work to a new level. Seemingly simple phrases can generate enormous complex problems when used a few thousand times a second by different groups.
Schemas as contracts While it may not be appropriate in every application, schemas in many cases behave as part of a legal contract or in lieu of a legal contract. When organizations are banding together to create shared vocabularies, this is both the carrot and the stick to get organizations involved.