[od-discuss] Open Knowledge Definition and specific technoloiges

Thu Oct 14 00:29:38 UTC 2010

On 3 October 2010 10:52, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
[...]
> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 5:50 PM,  <editor at fiveminuteargument.com> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> It would be very useful to know how the OKD applies with regards to
>> specific technologies. In particular, condition 4 ("Absence of
>> Technological Restriction") mentions that a technology "whose
>> specification is publicly and freely available" fulfils that condition. I
>> cannot find a list of technologies and whether or not they pass that test;
>> Adobe's Flash, for example, would appear to, but I'm not 100% certain that
>> it does.
>>
>> If you're unlikely to ever maintain a list yourselves (e.b. for reasons of
>> impartiality), do you know of anyone that does?

Good question. There was a companion project the OKF maintained called
the Information Accessibility Initiative that was attempting a listing
of open formats:

<http://wiki.okfn.org/p/iai/>
<http://wiki.okfn.org/p/iai/registry>

However this project is now retired and the registry is very clearly
far from comprehensive. There is also the
<http://www.openformats.org/> project but this does maintain a
comprehensive list.

A preliminary draft of an 'open format definition' (that would make
more precise the "absence of technological restriction" clause) is
here:

<http://www.opendefinition.org/ofd/>

But that provides no listing.

Thus the basic answer to your last question is, unfortunately, no I
don't know of any such (comprehensive) listing of open formats.

Regards,

Rufus