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 in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, UK. It is incorporated in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
and
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
as a
private company limited by guarantee
In British, Australian, Bermudian, Hong Kong and Irish company law (and previously New Zealand), a company limited by guarantee (CLG) is a type of corporation used primarily (but not exclusively) for non-profit organisations that require legal pe ...
.
Between May 2016 and May 2019 the organisation was named ''Open Knowledge International'', but decided in May 2019 to return to ''Open Knowledge Foundation''.
Aims
The aims of Open Knowledge Foundation are:
*Promoting the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why it is 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.
People
Renata Ávila Pinto joined as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Open Knowledge Foundation in October 2021. From February 2019 to August 2020,
Catherine Stihler served as CEO. She left the Open Knowledge Foundation to become the CEO of
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
. 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 access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
,
open data
Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...
,
open content,
open science,
data visualization
Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is nu ...
and
digital rights
Digital rights are those human rights and legal rights that allow individuals to access, use, create, and publish digital media or to access and use computers, other electronic devices, and telecommunications networks. The concept is particula ...
. In 2015, it consisted of:
*
Andrew Stott
Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is frequently shortened to "Andy" or "Drew". The word is derived ...
*
Becky Hogge
*
Benjamin Mako Hill
Benjamin Mako Hill is a free software activist, hacker, author, and professor. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the co-author of three technical manuals on the subject, ''Debia ...
*
Carolina Rossini
Carolina Rossini is a Brazilian-American attorney who focuses on intellectual property, open standard, and data privacy. She is notable for her work in intellectual property law in her native Brazil. In 2016, she was selected as a Young Global ...
*
Christopher Corbin
Christopher is the English version of a Europe-wide name derived from the Greek name Χριστόφορος (''Christophoros'' or '' Christoforos''). The constituent parts are Χριστός (''Christós''), "Christ" or "Anointed", and φέρε ...
*
Daniel Dietrich
Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength ...
*
Denis Parfenov
Denis Parfenov (russian: Денис Андреевич Парфенов; born 22 September 1987, Moscow) is a Russian political figure and a deputy of the 7th and 8th State Dumas.
In 2005, Parvenov joined the Russian Communist Youth Leag ...
*
Peter Murray-Rust
*
Sören Auer
Sören is a municipality in the district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde
Rendsburg-Eckernförde (; da, Rendsborg-Egernførde) is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is bounded by (from the east and clockwise) the city of Kiel, the district ...
*
Glyn Moody
*
Hannes Gassert
Hannes is a masculine given name and a diminutive of Johannes or Hannibal.
Hannes may refer to:
*Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish chemist and Nobel-prize winner
*Hannes Aigner (born 1989), German slalom canoeist and Olympic medalist
*Hannes ...
*
Lynn M.Combs-Heard
*
Jordan S. Hatcher
*
Jo Walsh
*
Mark Surman
Mark Surman is a Canadian open internet activist and the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. He is a leading advocate for trustworthy AI, digital privacy, and the open internet. Before joining the Mozilla Foundation, Mark spent more tha ...
*
Mayo Fuster Morell
*
Nat Torkington
*
Pieter Colpaert
*
Hans Rosling
Hans Rosling (; 27 July 1948 – 7 February 2017) was a Swedish physician, academic and public speaker. He was a professor of international health at Karolinska Institute and was the co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which deve ...
*
John Naughton
*
Nigel Shadbolt
Sir Nigel Richard Shadbolt (born 9 April 1956) is Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He is Chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded ...
*
Panagiotis Bamidis
*
Peter Suber
Peter Dain Suber (born November 8, 1951) is a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of law and open access to knowledge. He is a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarl ...
*
Yasodara Cordova
Network
As of 2018, Open Knowledge Foundation has 11 official chapters and 38 groups in different countries. In November 2022, the Open Knowledge Network was relaunched with two new projects.
It also supports 19 working groups.
*
Lobbying Transparency
*
Open Access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
*
Open Bibliography
*
Open Definition
The Open Definition is a document published by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) (previously Open Knowledge International) to define openness in relation to data and content. It specifies what licences for such material may and may not stipul ...
*
Open Design & Hardware
*
Open Development
*
Open Economics
*
Open Education
*
OpenGLAM
*
Open Government Data
*
Open Humanities
*
Open Linguistics
*
Open Product Data
*
Open Science
*
OpenSpending
*
Open Sustainability
*
Open Transport (project)
*
Personal Data and Privacy
*
Public Domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...
Operations
Many of Open Knowledge Foundation's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project,
CKAN
The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) is an open-source open data portal for the storage and distribution of open data. Being initially inspired by the package management capabilities of Debian Linux, CKAN has developed into a powerfu ...
, 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 group
A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...
s 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.
Open Knowledge Foundation 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. It also supported the development of the
Open Database License
The Open Database License (ODbL) is a copyleft license agreement intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use a database while maintaining this same freedom for others.
ODbL is published by Open Data Commons, which is part of Open K ...
(ODbL).
Outside of technology, Open Knowledge 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 Open Knowledge Foundation's founders, and current board secretary sits on the
UK government
ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd
, image = HM Government logo.svg
, image_size = 220px
, image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg
, image_size2 = 180px
, caption = Royal Arms
, date_est ...
's
Public Sector Transparency Board.
Technical
The foundation places a strong interest in the use of
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
technologies. Its software projects are hosted on
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...
, which utilises the
Git
Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...
version control software. Some of the projects are listed below:
*
CKAN
The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) is an open-source open data portal for the storage and distribution of open data. Being initially inspired by the package management capabilities of Debian Linux, CKAN has developed into a powerfu ...
, a tool that provides store for metadata. This enables governments to quickly and cheaply provide a catalogue of their data.
* Datahub, a community-run catalogue of useful sets of data on the Internet. Depending on the type of data (and its conditions of use), Datahub may also be able to store a copy of the data or host it in a database, and provide some basic visualisation tools.
* Frictionless Data, a collection of standards and tools for publishing 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 domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...
and
public domain calculators. Examples include the
Bibliographica,
Public Domain Works, Open Shakespeare, Open Text Book and
The Public Domain Review
''The Public Domain Review'' is an online journal showcasing works which have entered the public domain. It was co-founded by Jonathan Gray and Adam Green. It was launched on January 1, 2011 to coincide with Public Domain Day.
The ''Review'' ...
projects.
* OpenGLAM, an initiative that promotes free and open access to
digital cultural heritage, held by GLAMs: Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. OpenGLAM is co-funded by the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
as part of the DM2E (Digitised Manuscripts to
Europeana
Europeana is a web portal created by the European Union containing digitised cultural heritage collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe. It includes records of over 50 million cultural and scientific artefacts, brought togethe ...
) project.
* Open Economics
* Open Knowledge Forums
* Information Accessibility Initiative
* Open
geodata
* Guide to open data licensing
* "Get the Data" — a web-site for questions and answer on how to get data sets.
* POD - Product Open Data
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 occasionally since 2007. Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation and free information network infrastructure.
Annually, Open Knowledge Foundation supports
International Open Data Day
Panton Principles and Fellowships (Open data in Science)
The
Panton Principles
The ''Panton Principles'' are a set of principles which were written to promote open science. They were first drafted in July 2009 at the Panton Arms pub in Cambridge.
History
The principles were written by Peter Murray-Rust, Cameron Neylon, ...
(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 for 3 fellowships, which were awarded to Rosemarie Graves, Sam Moore, and Peter Kraker.
Other
Open Knowledge Foundation also supports Apps for Europe, and D-CENT, a European project created to share and organise data from seven countries, which ran from October 2013 to May 2016.
See also
*
Access to Knowledge movement
*
Free Knowledge Foundation
The Free Knowledge Foundation (FKF; es, Fundación Conocimiento Libre) is an organization aiming to promote Free Knowledge, including Free Software and Free Standards. It was founded in 2004 and is based in Madrid, Spain.
Pablo Machón has b ...
*
Open Data Institute
*
Open education
*
Tactical Technology Collective
Tactical Tech (est. 2003) is an international nongovernmental organization
An international non-governmental organization (INGO) is an organization which is independent of government involvement and extends the concept of a non-governmental organ ...
References
External links
*
A self-published history of the Open Knowledge Foundation
{{Authority control
Access to Knowledge movement
Articles containing video clips
Companies based in Cambridge
Free and open-source software organizations
Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom
Non-profit organisations based in the United Kingdom
Open content
Organisations based in Cambridge
Organizations established in 2004
Public domain