Open Knowledge Foundation

Open Knowledge Foundation
The Open Knowledge Foundation
Founder(s) Rufus Pollock, Martin Keegan, Jo Walsh
Type Non-profit organization
Tax ID No. 05133759[1]
Founded 2004
Location 37 Panton Street, Cambridge, CB2 1HL, UK[1]
Key people Rufus Pollock, Jonathan Gray
Area served International
Focus Open knowledge broadly, including open access, open content, open science and open data.
Motto Sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata...
Website http://www.okfn.org/

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a not-for-profit organization that promotes open knowledge, including open content and open data. It was founded 24 May 2004[2] in Cambridge, UK. The foundation has published the Open Knowledge Definition and runs several projects, such as CKAN, the registry software used by many governments for their open data projects and Where Does My Money Go, a service to monitor government spending.[3][4] As well as technical tools, the foundation also provides advocacy[5] and licensing advice around open content issues.[6] For example, it supported the development of the Open Database Licence (ODbL) and the Open Knowledge Definition.[7]

Contents

Aims

The aims of the Open Knowledge Foundation are:[1]

  • Promoting the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why is it a good idea.
  • Running open knowledge events, such as OKCon.
  • Working on open knowledge projects, such as Open Economics or Open Shakespeare
  • Providing infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. For example, the KnowledgeForge service and CKAN.
  • Acting at UK, European and international levels on open knowledge issues.

It was co-founded[8] by Rufus Pollock who remains a director,[9] along with Martin Keegan and Jo Walsh. The company Open Knowledge Foundation Limited was incorporated in 20 May 2004.

People

The current Open Knowledge Foundation Board is made up of:

  • James Casbon
  • Martin Keegan
  • Jordan S. Hatcher
  • Becky Hogge
  • Paula Le Dieu
  • Rufus Pollock
  • Jo Walsh

The Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Board includes many people prominent in the worlds of open access, open data, open content, open science, data visualization and digital rights, such as:

Operations

Most of the foundation's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project, CKAN, is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess.[10]

The organisation tends to support its aims by hosting infrastructure for semi-independent projects to develop. This approach to organising was hinted as one of its earliest projects was a project management service called KnowledgeForge, which runs on the KForge platform. KnowledgeForge allows sectoral working groups to have space to manage projects related to open knowledge. More widely, the project infrastructure includes both technical and face-to-face aspects. The organisation hosts several dozen mailing lists[11] for virtual discussion, utilises IRC for real-time communications and and also hosts events.

Advocacy

OKFN is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources.[12]

OKFN has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness[13] as well as the Open Software Service Definition[14]

Outside of technology, the foundation plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation[15][16] and producing guides.[17]

Rufus Pollock, one of OKFN's founders, and current board member sits on the UK government Public Sector Transparency Board.[18]

Technical

The foundation places a strong interest in the use of open source technologies. Each of its software projects are hosted on Bitbucket, which utilises the Mercurial version control software. Some of the projects are listed below:[19]

Banner for the Geodata project in Spanish
  • CKAN, a tool that provides store for metadata. This enables governments to quickly and cheaply provide a catalogue of their data.
  • Open bibliography, broadly construed as efforts to catalogue and build tools for working with and publishing bibliographic resources [20][21], with particular emphasis on those works that are in the Public Domain and public domain calculators. Examples include the Bibliographica[22]. Public Domain Works[23], Open Shakespeare[24] and Open Text Book[25] projects.
  • Open Economics
  • Open Knowledge Forums
  • Information Accessibility Initiative
  • Open geodata
  • Guide to open data licensing
  • The annual Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon)
  • "Get the Data" — a web-site for questions and answer on how to get data sets.

Events

Much of the collaboration with other related organisations occurs via events that the foundation hosts.[26] Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held annually since 2007.[27] Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation[28] and free information network infrastructure.[29]


References

  1. ^ a b c Open Knowledge Foundation. "About Us". http://okfn.org/about/. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  2. ^ "Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog » Blog Archive » Open Knowledge Foundation Launched". http://blog.okfn.org/2004/05/24/open-knowledge-foundation-launched/. Retrieved 2008-02-14. 
  3. ^ Doctorow, Cory. "Superb data-visualization of UK government spending". Boing Boing. http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/superb-data-visualiz.html. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  4. ^ BBC News (11 December 2009). "Web to watch government spending". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8407779.stm. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  5. ^ The Cabinet Office. "Transparency - useful links". http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/transparency-useful-links. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  6. ^ Mathys, Tony; Kamel Boulos, Maged N (31 December 2010). "Geospatial resources for supporting data standards, guidance and best practice in health informatics". BMC Research Notes. BioMed Central. pp. 19. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-4-19. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/4/19#IDA1O2IZ. 
  7. ^ Creative Commons. "CC Salon Berlin and openeverything focus – Feb. 26". http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/12919. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  8. ^ Quilty-Harper, Conrad (July 2010). "The Government has unlocked the open data safe – now we must open it". London: The Telegraph. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/conradquiltyharper/100046396/the-government-has-unlocked-the-open-data-safe-now-we-must-open-it/. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  9. ^ Naone, Erica (April 2011). "Bye-bye, Open Data?". http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/Bye-bye-Open-Data-1230464.html. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  10. ^ data.govt.uk. "Project Info: Who is Involved with the project?". HM Government. http://data.gov.uk/project#q6. "These include the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN): CKAN stores the catalogue behind data.gov.uk and a growing number of open data registries around the world." 
  11. ^ Open Knowledge Foundation. "lists.okfn.org Mailing Lists". http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  12. ^ Open Educational Resources Commons. "About". http://www.oercommons.org/about. Retrieved 27 April 2011. "Strategic Development and Outreach Partners ... Open Knowledge Foundation" 
  13. ^ http://opendefinition.org/
  14. ^ "Open Software Service Definition Launched". http://blog.okfn.org/2008/07/14/open-software-service-definition-launched/. Retrieved 2008-08-25. 
  15. ^ Open Society Foundations (September 2010). "Public Feedback Solicited on Access to Information and Open Government Data". http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/news/access-consultation-20100910. Retrieved 27 April 2011. "Information Program grantee Access Info Europe, together with the Open Knowledge Foundation, are holding a public consultation on open government data and the right of access to information." 
  16. ^ Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world". https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-rights-management-failure-developed-world-danger-developing-world. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  17. ^ Dietrich, Daniel. "Open Data Manual". http://opendatamanual.org/. 
  18. ^ data.govt.uk. "New Public Sector Transparency Board and Public Data Transparency Principles". HM Government. http://data.gov.uk/blog/new-public-sector-transparency-board-and-public-data-transparency-principles. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  19. ^ "projects - The Open Knowledge Foundation". http://www.okfn.org/projects. Retrieved 2008-02-14.  Open Knowledge Foundation Projects
  20. ^ http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/jiscexpo/jiscopenbib.aspx
  21. ^ http://openbiblio.net/
  22. ^ http://bibliographica.org/
  23. ^ http://publicdomainworks.net/
  24. ^ http://openshakespeare.org/
  25. ^ http://www.opentextbook.org/
  26. ^ Holloway, Michael (March 2008). "PUBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION: OFFICIALLY BETTER WHEN SHARED". Digital Rights Group. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2008/public-sector-information-officially-better-when-shared. Retrieved 27 April 2011. "And if you get excited by material that's free to access, reuse or re-distribute, then please come down to tomorrow's OKCon, for a day of seminars and workshops around the theme of 'Applications, Tools and Services'." 
  27. ^ Open Knowledge Foundation. "About". http://okcon.org/about/. Retrieved 27 April 2011. "The Annual [sic] Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon)" 
  28. ^ Gehelenborg, Nils. "Workshop on Open Visualization". Nature Network. http://network.nature.com/groups/scivis/forum/topics/1498. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 
  29. ^ Doctorow, Cory. "Free Information Infrastructure event in London next weekend". http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/26/free-information-inf.html. Retrieved 27 April 2011. 

See also

  • Free Knowledge Foundation

External links


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