Open Knowledge Foundation Explained

Open Knowledge Foundation
Abbreviation:DTX
Type:Nonprofit organisation
Founder:Rufus Pollock
Vat Id:05133759[1]
Location:86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom
Key People:Rufus Pollock, Renata Ávila Pinto (CEO)
Area Served:International
Focus:Open knowledge broadly, including open access, open content, open science and open data

Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004[2] in Cambridge, UK. It is incorporated in England and Wales as a private company limited by guarantee. Between May 2016 and May 2019 the organisation was named Open Knowledge International,[3] but decided in May 2019 to return to Open Knowledge Foundation.[4]

Aims

The aims of Open Knowledge Foundation are:

People

Renata Ávila Pinto joined as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Open Knowledge Foundation in October 2021.[5] From February 2019 to August 2020, Catherine Stihler served as CEO. She left the Open Knowledge Foundation to become the CEO of Creative Commons.[6] Between 2015–2017 Pavel Richter took on the role of CEO of Open Knowledge Foundation. Pavel was formerly Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland.

The Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Council includes people from the areas of open access, open data, open content, open science, data visualization and digital rights. In 2015, it consisted of:[7]

Network

As of 2018, Open Knowledge Foundation has 11 official chapters and 38 groups in different countries.[8] In November 2022, the Open Knowledge Network was relaunched with two new projects.[9]

It also supports 19 working groups.

Operations

Many of Open Knowledge 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 for virtual discussion, utilises IRC for real-time communications and also hosts events.

Advocacy

Open Knowledge Foundation is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources.[11]

Open Knowledge Foundation has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness,[12] as well as the Open Software Service Definition.[13] It also supported the development of the Open Database License (ODbL).[14]

Outside of technology, Open Knowledge 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 Open Knowledge Foundation's founders, and current board secretary sits on the UK government's Public Sector Transparency Board.[18]

The Prototype Fund is a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It is a low-threshold funding program for Germany software developers who develop innovative open source software.

Technical

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

Events

Much of the collaboration with other related organisations occurs via events that the foundation hosts.[34] Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held occasionally since 2007.[35] Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation[36] and free information network infrastructure.[37]

Annually, Open Knowledge Foundation supports International Open Data Day

Panton Principles and Fellowships (Open data in Science)

The Panton Principles (for Open Data in Science) in 2010 had large contributions from Open Knowledge people and in 2011 Jonathan Gray and Peter Murray-Rust successfully obtained funding from OSF for two fellowships, held by Sophie Kershaw and Ross Mounce. In 2013 OKF obtained sponsorship from CCIA[38] for 3 fellowships, which were awarded to Rosemarie Graves,[39] Sam Moore, and Peter Kraker.[40]

Other

Open Knowledge Foundation also supports Apps for Europe,[41] and D-CENT, a European project created to share and organise data from seven countries, which ran from October 2013 to May 2016.[42]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Open Knowledge Foundation . About Us . 27 April 2011.
  2. Web site: Open Knowledge Foundation launched. Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog. 25 October 2015. 2004-05-24 . Rufus . Pollock .
  3. Web site: Open Knowledge International – our new name!. 23 May 2016. Open Knowledge Foundation .
  4. Web site: For a fair, free and open future: celebrating 15 years of the Open Knowledge Foundation. 20 May 2019. Catherine . Stihler . Open Knowledge Foundation .
  5. Web site: A new CEO for Open Knowledge Foundation – Renata Ávila. 2021-10-12 . Vanessa . Barnett . Open Knowledge Foundation .
  6. Web site: Catherine Stihler to leave Open Knowledge Foundation to lead Creative Commons. 2020-07-09 . Open Knowledge Foundation .
  7. Web site: Advisory Council. https://web.archive.org/web/20140714223530/https://okfn.org/about/advisory-council/. dead. 14 July 2014. Open Knowledge . 31 October 2015.
  8. Web site: Open Knowledge: The Global Network. Open Knowledge Foundation. 7 April 2018.
  9. Web site: Better together than alone: say hello again to the Open Knowledge Network . Open Knowledge Foundation blog . Sara . Petti . 28 November 2022 . 28 November 2022.
  10. Web site: data.gov.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. Web site: Open Educational Resources Commons. About. 1 November 2015. Strategic Development and Outreach Partners ... Open Knowledge Foundation.
  12. Web site: Open Definition. Open Definition. 2011-06-17. 1 November 2015.
  13. Web site: Open Software Service Definition Launched. 1 November 2015. 2008-07-14.
  14. Web site: Creative Commons. CC Salon Berlin and openeverything focus – Feb. 26. 29 October 2015. 2009-02-23.
  15. Web site: Open Society Foundations. Public Feedback Solicited on Access to Information and Open Government Data. 1 November 2015. September 2010. 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.. https://web.archive.org/web/20110108145856/http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/news/access-consultation-20100910. 8 January 2011. dead.
  16. Web site: Electronic Frontier Foundation. Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world. 1 November 2015. 2005-03-23.
  17. Web site: Dietrich. Daniel. Open Data Manual. 1 November 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20130827053435/http://opendatamanual.org/. 27 August 2013. dead.
  18. Web site: data.govt.uk. New Public Sector Transparency Board and Public Data Transparency Principles. HM Government. 1 November 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20110925185118/http://data.gov.uk/blog/new-public-sector-transparency-board-and-public-data-transparency-principles. 25 September 2011. dead.
  19. Web site: projects - The Open Knowledge Foundation. 1 November 2015. Open Knowledge Projects
  20. Web site: Feature Tour ckan - The open source data portal software. ckan.org. 1 November 2015. 2012-03-28.
  21. Web site: datahub.io. datahub.io. 2006-06-23. 1 November 2015.
  22. Web site: Frictionless Data . Frictionless Data . 2 February 2019.
  23. Web site: Open Bibliography. JISC. 1 November 2015.
  24. Web site: Open bibliography and Open Bibliographic Data | Open Bibliographic Data Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Openbiblio.net. 1 November 2015.
  25. Web site: Open Shakespeare. Open Shakespeare. 2012-04-27. 1 November 2015.
  26. Web site: Open Text Book. 1 November 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150912064713/http://opentextbook.org/. 12 September 2015.
  27. Web site: ABOUT. The Public Domain Review. Open Knowledge Foundation. 1 November 2015.
  28. Web site: The Open Definition - Open Definition - Defining Open in Open Data, Open Content and Open Knowledge. opendefinition.org. 1 November 2015.
  29. Web site: Open Knowledge: Working Groups . 21 May 2021 . 14 May 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160514084626/https://okfn.org/get-involved/working-groups/ . dead .
  30. Web site: Workpackage 4: Community building. 31 January 2014.
  31. Web site: Open Economics. openeconomics.net. 1 November 2015.
  32. Web site: Open Knowledge Forums. discuss.okfn.org. 1 November 2015.
  33. Web site: Open Geodata Community . OSGeo . 1 November 2015.
  34. Web site: Holloway. Michael. Public sector information: officially better when shared . Digital Rights Group. 1 November 2015. March 2008. 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'..
  35. Web site: Open Knowledge Foundation. About. 1 November 2015. The Annual [sic] Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon).
  36. Web site: Gehelenborg. Nils. Workshop on Open Visualization. Nature Network. 1 November 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304023413/http://network.nature.com/groups/scivis/forum/topics/1498. 4 March 2016.
  37. Web site: Doctorow. Cory. Free Information Infrastructure event in London next weekend. 26 September 2005. 1 November 2015.
  38. Web site: ccianet.org. ccianet.org. 1 November 2015.
  39. Web site: Rosie Graves - University of Leicester. 1 November 2015.
  40. Web site: Panton Principles: Panton Fellowships. 1 November 2015. 2012-01-12.
  41. Web site: Apps for Europe turning data into business. www.appsforeurope.eu. 29 October 2015. 15 October 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20151015160845/http://www.appsforeurope.eu/. dead.
  42. Web site: D-CENT. dcentproject.eu. 29 October 2015.

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