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Open Knowledge Foundation

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The Open Knowledge Foundation
Founded2004
FounderRufus Pollock, Martin Keegan, Jo Walsh
TypeNon-profit organization
05133759[1]
FocusOpen knowledge broadly, including open access, open content, open science and open data.
Location
Area served
International
Key people
Rufus Pollock, Jonathan Gray
Websitehttp://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]

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:

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

Rufus Pollock sits on the UK government Public Sector Transparency Board.[12]

OKFN is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources.[13]

OKFN has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness[14] as well as the Open Software Service Definition[15]

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:[16]

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 [17][18], with particular emphasis on those works that are in the Public Domain and public domain calculators. Examples include the Bibliographica[19]. Public Domain Works[20], Open Shakespeare[21] and Open Text Book[22] 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.[23] Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held annually since 2007.[24] Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation[25] and free information network infrastructure.[26]


References

  1. ^ a b c Open Knowledge Foundation. "About Us". Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  2. ^ "Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog » Blog Archive » Open Knowledge Foundation Launched". Retrieved 14 February 2008.
  3. ^ Doctorow, Cory. "Superb data-visualization of UK government spending". Boing Boing. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  4. ^ BBC News (11 December 2009). "Web to watch government spending". Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  5. ^ The Cabinet Office. "Transparency - useful links". Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  6. ^ Mathys, Tony (31 December 2010). "Geospatial resources for supporting data standards, guidance and best practice in health informatics". BMC Research Notes. BioMed Central. p. 19. doi:10.1186/1756-0500-4-19. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  7. ^ Creative Commons. "CC Salon Berlin and openeverything focus – Feb. 26". Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  8. ^ Quilty-Harper, Conrad (2010). "The Government has unlocked the open data safe – now we must open it". London: The Telegraph. Retrieved 27 April 2011. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Naone, Erica (2011). "Bye-bye, Open Data?". Retrieved 27 April 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  10. ^ data.govt.uk. "Project Info: Who is Involved with the project?". HM Government. 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". Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  12. ^ data.govt.uk. "New Public Sector Transparency Board and Public Data Transparency Principles". HM Government. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  13. ^ Open Educational Resources Commons. "About". Retrieved 27 April 2011. Strategic Development and Outreach Partners ... Open Knowledge Foundation
  14. ^ http://opendefinition.org/
  15. ^ "Open Software Service Definition Launched". Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  16. ^ "projects - The Open Knowledge Foundation". Retrieved 14 February 2008. Open Knowledge Foundation Projects
  17. ^ http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/jiscexpo/jiscopenbib.aspx
  18. ^ http://openbiblio.net/
  19. ^ http://bibliographica.org/
  20. ^ http://publicdomainworks.net/
  21. ^ http://openshakespeare.org/
  22. ^ http://www.opentextbook.org/
  23. ^ Holloway, Michael (2008). "PUBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION: OFFICIALLY BETTER WHEN SHARED". Digital Rights Group. 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'. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  24. ^ Open Knowledge Foundation. "About". Retrieved 27 April 2011. The Annual [sic] Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon)
  25. ^ Gehelenborg, Nils. "Workshop on Open Visualization". Nature Network. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  26. ^ Doctorow, Cory. "Free Information Infrastructure event in London next weekend". Retrieved 27 April 2011.

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