[okfn-discuss] Setting up 2 Funds (for F/OSS and Open Knowledge)

Wed Jul 19 14:19:42 UTC 2006

Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> <quote who="Rufus Pollock" date="Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 07:53:10PM +0100">
> 
>>== Fund 1: Generic F/OSS Fund ==
>>
>>Summary: Donates money to F/OSS projects that produce software we use.
> ...
> 
>>== Fund 2: Open Knowledge Projects Fund ==
>>
>>Summary: supports external open knowledge projects.
> 
> 
> To give me a better idea about what you mean here, it might be useful to
> get a list of examples of the types of projects, organizations, or
> people that you think would good candidates in each of these candidates.

Here are some examples of what we might do in these two categories. All 
comments, additions, criticisms welcome.

Regards,

Rufus

## Fund 1: Generic F/OSS Fund ##

As stated the funding would be oriented towards pieces of software that 
we use. Thus examples of projects/organizations to which the money might 
go are:

   * python
   * debian
   * moinmoin
   * subversion
   * trac
   * ...

Beyond these there are a host of smaller components/libraries which we 
use mainly at the python end of things.

It might also be good to make some contribution to user tools such as 
Mozilla/Firefox and OpenOffice which are important in pushing and 
developing standards (and support for those standards) on which we depend.

## Fund 2: Open Knowledge Projects Fund ##

Here while having general funding we might also utilize bounties to 
encourage the development of particular features of additions to 
software or projects which would be directly useful to us. I would also 
suggest that because open knowledge is at an early stage of development 
some initial 'research' work to discover what is out there may be 
necessary. Existing work on the wiki includes our own project list and 
survey page on existing tools:

   http://www.okfn.org/wiki/
   http://www.okfn.org/wiki/SoftwareTools

Examples of existing projects:

   * project gutenberg
   * geonames
   * asciitmathml
   * plotkit
   * openstreetmap

Examples of 'Tools Wanted':

### 'sciwiki' ###

Integrate math support and graph support into moinmoin preferably using 
javascript (e.g. asciimathml + plotkit)

### Rendering of geo locations using **open data** ###

Would like a simple software package to allow one to render location on 
a map with link to text. Essential that underlying map data be open. 
Would also like this to be deployable locally in addition to on a 
server. Preference would be for python or javascript type implementation.

### Research on and/or provision of text annotation ###

What text annotation tools exist and what 'api' do they require from the 
text. To take a concrete example: how would one annotate shakespeare 
texts in a non-invasive manner and what open source tools already exist. 
A demo implemenation would be particularly useful.