Open Knowledge Foundation
Encyclopedia
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 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. As well as technical tools, the foundation also provides advocacy and licensing advice around open content issues. For example, it supported the development of the Open Database Licence (ODbL) and the Open Knowledge Definition.
It was co-founded by Rufus Pollock who remains a director, along with Martin Keegan and Jo Walsh. The company Open Knowledge Foundation Limited was incorporated in 20 May 2004.
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:
, is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess.
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 for virtual discussion, utilises IRC for real-time communications and and also hosts events.
OKFN has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness as well as the Open Software Service Definition
Outside of technology, the foundation plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation and producing guides.
Rufus Pollock
, one of OKFN's founders, and current board member sits on the UK government Public Sector Transparency Board
.
technologies. Each of its software projects are hosted on Bitbucket
, which utilises the Mercurial
version control software. Some of the projects are listed below:
Open Knowledge
Open Knowledge is a term used to denote a set of principles and methodologies related to the production and distribution of knowledge works in an open manner...
, including open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
and open data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
. It was founded 24 May 2004 in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The foundation has published the Open Knowledge Definition and runs several projects, such as CKAN
CKAN
The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network is a web-based system for the storage and distribution of data, such as spreadsheets and the contents of databases supported by the Open Knowledge Foundation...
, the registry software used by many governments for their open data projects and Where Does My Money Go, a service to monitor government spending. As well as technical tools, the foundation also provides advocacy and licensing advice around open content issues. For example, it supported the development of the Open Database Licence (ODbL) and the Open Knowledge Definition.
Aims
The aims of the Open Knowledge Foundation are:- 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 by Rufus Pollock who remains a director, 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 HoggeBecky HoggeBecky Hogge is a UK-based music and technology writer and the first full-time executive director of the Open Rights Group, resigning in 2008. She was previously the managing editor, and then the technology director and technology commissioning editor for openDemocracy.net...
- Paula Le Dieu
- Rufus PollockRufus PollockDr Rufus Pollock is an economist and co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. He is currently a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge and a Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation which he...
- Jo Walsh
The Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Board includes many people prominent in the worlds of open access, open data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
, open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
, open science, data visualization
Data visualization
Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"....
and digital rights
Digital rights
The term digital rights describes the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network...
, such as:
- Becky HoggeBecky HoggeBecky Hogge is a UK-based music and technology writer and the first full-time executive director of the Open Rights Group, resigning in 2008. She was previously the managing editor, and then the technology director and technology commissioning editor for openDemocracy.net...
- Tim Hubbard
- Benjamin Mako HillBenjamin Mako HillBenjamin Mako Hill is a Debian hacker, intellectual property researcher, activist and author. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the author of two best-selling technical books on the subject, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible and The...
- Peter Murray-RustPeter Murray-RustPeter Murray-Rust is a contemporary chemist born in Guildford in 1941.He was educated at Bootham School and Balliol College, Oxford. After obtaining a D.Phil he became lecturer in chemistry at the University of Stirling and was first warden of Andrew Stewart Hall of Residence...
- John NaughtonJohn NaughtonJohn Naughton is an Irish academic, journalist and writer based in the United Kingdom since 1968. He has worked at the Open University since 1972, and has held the title of Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology since 2006....
- Michael NielsenMichael NielsenMichael Aaron Nielsen is a writer living just outside Toronto, Canada. Before, he was an academic in physics. He worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, as the Richard Chace Tolman Prize Fellow at Caltech, was Foundation Professor of Quantum Information Science and a Federation Fellow at the...
- Hans RoslingHans RoslingHans Rosling is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.-Study and career:From 1967 to 1974 Rosling...
- Peter SuberPeter SuberPeter Suber is the creator of the game Nomic and a leading voice in the open access movement. He is a senior research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, the open access project director at Public Knowledge, a senior researcher at SPARC , and a Fellow at Harvard's and...
- John WilbanksJohn WilbanksJohn Wilbanks is a Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and runs the Consent to Research Project.-Education and career:John Wilbanks grew up in Knoxville, TN. He attended Tulane University and received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 1994...
Operations
Most of the foundation's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project, CKANCKAN
The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network is a web-based system for the storage and distribution of data, such as spreadsheets and the contents of databases supported by the Open Knowledge Foundation...
, is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess.
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
KForge
KForge is enterprise application architecture for project hosting.Distributed under the GNU General Public License KForge is free software. KForge is written using the Python programming language and integrates existing best-of-breed tools.-Features:...
platform. KnowledgeForge allows sectoral working groups
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
to have space to manage projects related to open knowledge. More widely, the project infrastructure includes both technical and face-to-face
Face-to-face
The face-to-face relation refers to a concept in the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas' thought on human sociality.Lévinas' phenomenological account of the "face-to-face" encounter serves as the basis for his ethics and the rest of his philosophy...
aspects. The organisation hosts several dozen mailing lists 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.OKFN has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness as well as the Open Software Service Definition
Outside of technology, the foundation plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation and producing guides.
Rufus Pollock
Rufus Pollock
Dr Rufus Pollock is an economist and co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. He is currently a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge and a Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation which he...
, one of OKFN's founders, and current board member sits on the UK government Public Sector Transparency Board
Public Sector Transparency Board
-Membership:The Members of the board are:*Francis Maude , the Minister for the Cabinet Office*Sir Tim Berners-Lee*Dr Rufus Pollock*Professor Nigel Shadbolt*Tom Steinberg-See also:*...
.
Technical
The foundation places a strong interest in the use of open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
technologies. Each of its software projects are hosted on Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Bitbucket is a web-based hosting service for projects that use either the Mercurial or Git revision control systems. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts...
, which utilises the Mercurial
Mercurial
Mercurial is a cross-platform, distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is mainly implemented using the Python programming language, but includes a binary diff implementation written in C. It is supported on Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Linux...
version control software. Some of the projects are listed below:
- 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 , with particular emphasis on those works that are in the Public DomainPublic domainWorks are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
and public domain calculators. Examples include the Bibliographica. Public Domain Works, Open Shakespeare and Open Text Book 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. Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held annually since 2007. Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation and free information network infrastructure.External links
- The Open Knowledge Foundation official website
- Where Does My Money Go? government spending project