Open Knowledge Foundation

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a not-for-profit organization aiming to promote open content and open data (referred by the foundation as open knowledge). It was founded 24 May 2004^[1] in Cambridge, UK. The foundation has published the Open Knowledge Definition and runs several projects, such as the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network and supported the development of the Open Database Licence

Aim

The aims of the Open Knowledge Foundation are:^[2]

• 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 the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network.
• Acting at UK, European and international levels on open knowledge issues.

It was co-founded by Rufus Pollock who remains a Director of the Company, along with Martin Keegan and Jo Walsh. The company Open Knowledge Foundation Limited was incorporated in 20 May 2004. It now has an 8 person strong Board of Directors.

People

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:

• Becky Hogge
• Benjamin Mako Hill
• Peter Murray-Rust
• John Naughton
• Michael Nielsen
• Hans Rosling
• Peter Suber
• John Wilbanks

Projects

Some of the projects are listed below:^[3]

• The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network
• Open Knowledge Definition
• Open Shakespeare
• Open Economics
• Open Text Book
• Public Domain Works
• Public Domain Calculators
• Open Knowledge Forums
• Information Accessibility Initiative
• Open Geodata
• Guide to open data licensing
• The annual Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon)
• Open Software Service Definition^[4]

Events

The Open Knowledge Foundation held the first Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) in 2007, the second in in March 2008, and the third in March 2009. In Autumn 2005 the Foundation had co-organized together with Node.London and others a similar entitled the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures. All of conferences have so been held London, UK. It appears that the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon)^[5] is intended to become a regular event.

The theme of the 2007 conference was Atomisation and Commercial Opportunity.^[6]

Some of the talks were as follows:^[7]

• The Public Domain Works Database and the Public Domain Burn project ^[8]
• Visualizing Public Media^[9]
• Planning Alerts^[10]
• The SP-ARK Project (Adventure Pictures)^[11]

Charles Arthur spoke about the Free Our Data campaign, which aims to encourage the UK government to make 'impersonal government data available at cost'. Other speakers include Steve Coast of OpenStreetMap and Ed Parsons of Google who said that current licensing of Ordnance Survey data was unsatisfactory.^[12]

External links

• "FrontPage - The Open Knowledge Foundation". http://www.okfn.org. Retrieved 2008-02-14. 
• "Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog". http://blog.okfn.org/. Retrieved 2008-02-14. 
• "Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network". http://www.ckan.net/. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 
• "KnowledgeForge - Home". http://www.knowledgeforge.net/. Retrieved 2008-02-14. 
• "The Open Knowledge Definition". http://www.opendefinition.net/. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 
• "Open Shakespeare". http://www.openshakespeare.org/. Retrieved 2008-02-14. 

References

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