[okfn-coord] Draft proposal for CKAN

Mon Oct 29 17:47:47 UTC 2007

Hi guys,

I've just posted a draft letter of inquiry (and associated notes) to the 
Mellon Foundation for CKAN here:

   http://www.okfn.org/board/wiki/CKAN-Mellon

(Its rather long, but I can post whole thing, or just letter, inline if 
that would be useful.)

As the programme leader is Ira Fuchs, who (as indicated in my brief 
biographical summary) has a technical background, we can afford to flesh 
out the technical aspects. Input here (particularly with respect to the 
development process, features list, timeline, budget, etc.) would be 
very much appreciated, as I'm not so technical.. :-)

I've also worked to marry the description of CKAN with the programme 
objectives - which fortunately has not been too difficult. As well as 
stressing the importance of extensibility and documentation (both of 
which I've mentioned), Ira appears to particularly like open source 
projects whose developers are paid (what he calls the 'directed' rather 
than the 'scratching an itch' model), which are 'branded' (like apache), 
are 'visible',  and have long term (financial) models for sustainability 
(like JSTOR). He cites Moodle, Sakai, and Chandler as things he likes. 
Suggestions along these lines would also be great.

Finally as Mellon places an emphasis on high degree of collaboration and 
the inclusion of wide communities in technologies they fund, in the 
final paragraph I've attempted to summarise the more experienced 
organisations and 'constituencies' we will be able to solicit feedback 
from. If anyone's got any good ideas for this...

I've thought we might leave out a project team for this (as they don't 
ask for one), but nevertheless it could be good to start contacting 
people. I understand a current list would include Jo, Rufus, John and 
possibly Aaron Straup Cope? Can anyone think of any suitable 'official' 
advisors, if we need any?

Regards,

Jonathan